


The Lost Ones

by tfm



Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2010-08-15
Updated: 2010-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-08 12:33:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 23
Words: 23,278
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/75697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tfm/pseuds/tfm
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chicago, 1997. A beat cop and a federal agent join forces to solve the mystery behind the disappearance of a homeless teenager. They uncover a conspiracy that turns their fight for justice into a fight for their lives.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_Chicago, Illinois_

_September, 1997._

Derek Morgan was twenty-four years old, and an officer with the Chicago Police Department. He had graduated _cum laude _from Northwestern Law over two years ago.

One day, he hoped to join the FBI.

‘_A smart boy like you,’ _his mother had told him, ‘_You can do whatever you want.’_ She had not argued at his decision to join the police force first, even though the Bureau would have jumped at the chance of hiring someone of his calibre. He had told her he wanted to work this street-level justice first, that he didn’t want to get so tied down in the hunt for evil that he forgot all about these minor injustices.

Of course, there were other reasons too. He did not need to tell his mother – she already knew.

The photo of his father, resplendent in dress blues, sat next to his own on his mother’s mantelpiece. Though it had been fourteen years since his death, he still remembered the smiling, laughing face of a man who valued integrity above all else.

He was doing this to honor his father’s memory.

*             *             *

He dressed carefully in the locker room that morning, unaware that the events of the day would change his life forever. It was not an ominous event – he dressed carefully every morning, still getting used to the novelty of wearing the uniform.

‘You ready for another big day, kid?’ asked Frank Pearson, Morgan’s partner. Pearson was a man that Morgan both liked and respected. He was a career beat cop, the kind that never aspired to move up the chain of command. The streets were his domain. Pearson had been acquainted with Morgan’s father, back in the day.

‘Always, old man.’ Morgan grinned, readily accepting the pat on the back given to him by Pearson.

The patrol car navigated the streets at Pearson’s relaxed command. Just ten minutes into their shift, they had yet to encounter any problems.

‘So how was dinner last night?’ Every Thursday night, Morgan went to his mother’s house for dinner. It gave him a chance to catch up with her, and his two sisters, Sarah and Desiree. Morgan grinned at the experience.

‘Same old,’ he said. ‘Momma’s still asking me when I’m gonna give her some grandchildren. As though I’m getting too old, or something.’

Pearson laughed. ‘You tell her she can have some of mine. I’ve got far too many to dote on.’

‘Don’t tell her you said that,’ Morgan warned him. ‘I’m afraid she’s gonna take you up on it. I’m going back tonight – Desiree wants to introduce us to her new-’

He stopped suddenly as Pearson braked. A woman had run out into the street in front of the car, waving her arms madly. They both recognized her – her name was Rita, and she was a local homeless woman. They pulled the car over to the side, Rita rushing to Pearson’s door before he could get out.

‘He’s gone!’ she was crying. Tears had washed away some of the dirt on her face, revealing mottled red skin.

‘Whoah.’ Pearson put a hand out. ‘Calm down Rita. Tell me what’s going on.’

Morgan exited the car silently, watching Pearson. He did not interfere; Pearson had been walking these streets since before he was born.

‘It’s Stevie...’ She struggled to get the words out, tears consuming her. ‘He’s missing.’

Morgan and Pearson shared a glance. Stevie was a boy – a young man, really – that Rita had taken under her wing. He had been kicked out of home by his parents, and had taken to the streets. In the six months that Morgan had walked this beat, he had never seen Rita without Stevie. She was like a mother to him, only she actually cared.

‘It’s okay,’ Pearson tried to reassure her. ‘Can you tell me where you last saw him?’

She gestured vaguely to the alleyway behind them, where Morgan knew they spent most nights. ‘I woke up this morning and he was gone,’ she whimpered, clutching to Pearson’s shirt. ‘What if he doesn’t want to live with me anymore? What if he’s running back to his real family?’

Pearson assured her that they would ask around, see if anyone knew what happened. Though he would not admit it to Morgan, he was not confident of finding Stevie safe and well any time soon; if he had run away of his own accord, then there was technically nothing within the law they could do. If he had been taken by force, then it would be out of their hands – the detectives would handle it, if they even considered it a worthy use of their time. A missing homeless kid was not high on their list of priorities.

‘Can you tell me how old Stevie was?’ If the boy was above the age of majority, then their potential search might take a different path.

‘He’ll be twenty in November,’ she told them sadly. ‘I’ve been saving – I wanted to get him something nice this year. Something that he would be proud to have.’

‘I bet he’s proud to have someone like _you_, Rita,’ said Pearson softly. Truth be told, he did not think that Stevie had run away of his own accord. There had to have been something else going on.

*             *             *

‘Come on, Rick,’ Pearson pleaded with the Detective. ‘The kid didn’t run away. I’m sure of it.’

‘I understand that, Frank,’ said Detective Rick Hamilton apologetically. ‘But I can’t just send people out investigating on your suspicions – I need hard evidence. Something more than a homeless woman’s insistence.’ He was thinking pragmatically – if they took every case that crossed their desks, then there would be three times as many failed marriages in the department than there already were.

‘If you can find something that tells you this kid was taken violently, then I’ll look into it, but until then, there’s nothing I can do. If you want to be jerked around even more, I guess you could call the FBI field office, but I think they’d take this case even less seriously than me.’

Morgan stood to the side, his arm around Rita. Rick was a good friend of Pearson’s, and had come to turn down the case in person as a matter of courtesy. He did care, Morgan knew, but then he also knew about the heavy caseload; the murder rate was somewhat higher than it had been the previous year.

They watched as Rick left, sending Rita a sympathetic smile.

They continued their questioning, having found no information of consequence before the arrival of the Detective. Technically speaking, they were shirking their duties, but neither Morgan nor Pearson gave much thought to the concept. They had more important things to do.

‘Excuse me,’ Morgan called to a man standing across the street; he was smoking a cigarette, watching them.

‘I ain’t doin’ nothing, man.’ Upon closer inspection, Morgan noticed the clothes that had not been washed in a week, the skin that had accumulated a layer of dirt.

‘I just want to ask you a couple of questions.’ He had not seen this man around in the area before – wondered if he was only a recent addition to the area.

The man exhaled his cigarette, giving Morgan an expression that might have mean “go on.”

‘A young homeless man went missing last night; nineteen years old, around 5’11”, Caucasian. You see anything?’

The man relaxed, as if Morgan’s line of questioning had not been what he was expecting, as if this particular matter at hand did not make him feel as uncomfortable as others might of.

‘I wasn’t here last night,’ he admitted. ‘A friend of mine, he...I was at a friend’s place.’

Looking the man in the eye, Morgan did not think he was lying. He nodded his thanks and turned to leave.

‘Wait,’ the man put a partially gloved hand on his shoulder. ‘Can I ask...why do you care?’

‘A person is missing.’ Morgan was slightly confused – why _shouldn’t _he care?

‘You’re new, right? How long have you been in the force?’ The man looks at him with a gaze that is critical, but not unkind.

‘Six months.’

‘Don’t let it get to you,’ the man said, and before Morgan could ask what he meant, all that was left of his presence was a smouldering cigarette butt.

*             *             *

Officer Frank Pearson stared at the city shrouded in darkness. He had always worked the day shift, so seeing his regular beat at night always felt different. The streets were so similar, yet so unfamiliar. The buildings did not have the thick coating of scum that was so omnipresent during the daylight hours.

They had found nothing in their questioning during the day, but Pearson thought he would have better luck at night. It was around the same time Stevie had initially gone missing; anyone who stuck to a routine would be there.

Morgan was at his mother’s house, meeting his sister’s new boyfriend. He had not told the young officer where he was going, knowing that he would have insisted on joining him.

Tonight, he worked alone.

He jumped, startled, at the sound of a voice.

‘You shouldn’t have come back.’

Somewhere in the streets of Chicago, a shot sounded.


	2. Chapter 2

Emily Prentiss was a few weeks shy of twenty-six, and was a freshly qualified FBI agent in the Violent Crimes task force of the Chicago Field Office. She had graduated _magna cum laude_ from Yale; she had been first in her class at the academy.

And yet some people still seemed to think she shouldn’t be there.

The Prentiss name was not unknown in government circles; Elizabeth Prentiss was at the height of her career, and showed no signs of slowing down. Unfortunately for Emily, that meant suspicion seemed to follow her wherever she went.

She had been there almost eight months, and she still couldn’t catch a break. SAC Wellington was not the most forthcoming of supervisors. It was a delicate way of saying she hated his guts.

Six months into her tenure, she discovered the reason why he was being such a jackass.

‘He doesn’t trust you,’ Hoskins had told her. She rolled her eyes.She had spent the day sifting through sewerage, looking for a missing wedding ring; for her, it had gone beyond trust.

‘It’ll take him about a year; you do all the grunt work, take all the crap for a single year, and then suddenly he’ll decide you’re like the daughter he never had.’

Of course, as Emily later found out, Max Wellington _did_ have a daughter; sick of her father’s bureaucratic boot-camp mentality, she had run away to join the Army.

‘Prentiss!’

‘God damn son of a bitch,’ muttered Emily. The loud voice had caused her to jump, spilling coffee all over herself. She rubbed at the spreading stain on her white blouse, staring up in the direction of the voice.

Wellington stood at the entrance to the bullpen; she tried to interpret his expression, but he always looked so angry, it was difficult to ascertain his emotions at any given time. ‘My office.’

Hoskins gave her a sympathetic glance from across the room.

She walked in almost cautiously, tightening her jacket across her soiled shirt. He watched her critically as she stood silent opposite him. After almost a full minute, he passed across a case file, nodding for her to read through it.

She skimmed across the first page; it described the disappearance of a homeless teenager. She furrowed her brow, unsure what this had to do with Violent Crimes.

‘Possible kidnapping,’ Wellington told her. ‘I’d like for you to investigate.’ His expression did change then – he raised an eyebrow, as if daring her to challenge his authority. She knew what his game was; he didn’t give a damn about missing teenagers, he was testing her.

So she put on a smile, and stared him in the eye. ‘Of, course,_ sir_.’

*             *             *

She searched through the trunk of her car, trying to find a clean shirt. She usually kept a spare set of clothes in there, but she had cleaned out the car last week, and evidently forgotten to return them. Instead, she spat on her fingers, and made a half-hearted attempt to rub the stain out. While most of the color had gone, there was still a slightly darker patch that made the OCD segment of Emily’s brain cringe.

She threw the file on the front seat; she would read it fully when she got to the crime scene. From what she gathered, though, it wasn’t even really a crime scene, merely the last place the boy had been seen.

Truth be told, her initial reaction was skepticism. The notion of a homeless person disappearing seemed a little off to her. As she had been taught, though, she would reserve further judgment until learning more about the situation.

According to the clock on the dash, it was a little after 7am. She had not intended to come in to work so early, but after a disastrous attempt at a social life last night, she decided that maybe spending twenty-four hours a day fighting crime wasn’t such a bad idea.

As with a large number of FBI agents, she aspired to one day be accepted into the prestigious BAU. First, though, she would have to have been in the FBI for a minimum of three years, though most agents were lucky to be accepted after ten years of service.

She took a sip from the refilled travel mug, careful not to spill.

They only took the best of the best.

*             *             *

It took her over half an hour to reach the location listed on the file. Rush hour was bad on the best of days; this morning had been a bitch.

She looked up from the case file momentarily to watch the street. Life moved on. No-one seemed to notice – or care – that there was apparently someone missing from their midst. Someone who had, at best, run away, and at worst…Emily didn’t want to think about the worst.

She stepped out of the car, and was confronted almost immediately.

‘Well it’s about time,’ the woman said. She was holding a bucket and rag – she had been washing the windows of her store.

‘I’m sorry, ma’am?’ Emily asked, somewhat confused. The file said that the woman who had reported “Stevie” missing had been homeless.

‘I was locking up last night when I heard a gunshot. I called the police, but no-one ever came. I’m glad you’re here to do something about it.’

Emily almost cringed – why did people always seem to pick her for law enforcement.

‘Actually, ma’am I’m here on another matter…’ The woman frowned, and Emily continued. ‘But I could look into it for you.’

The woman gave a vague description of events – it amounted to “I heard a loud bang, at about eight” and Emily almost understood why no-one had come to the woman with further information about the situation. If any officer had actually responded, they had most likely discovered it to be nothing.

There was a dark smudge on the concrete almost a hundred feet from where Emily’s car was parked. It was enough out of the way that no-one seemed to notice it, and if they had, the concrete was of a color that ensured the substance was questionable. It could have been blood. But then, it just as easily could have been oil, or any other number of dark colored liquids. There was no reason for her to jump to conclusions, and yet she felt a strange sense of foreboding at the sight.

Her fingers brushed the ground; it was dry, but a shiver still ran down her spine. She stood, looking around her – could it be a coincidence that a “gunshot” was heard in the area less than twenty-four hours after a boy went missing? It was likely; due to gang violence, Chicago had recorded over seven hundred murders the previous year. Compared to that, this seemed almost insignificant.

_‘A human being is never insignificant_,_’_ she reminded herself. It had been difficult to overthrow her mother’s influence, the influence that told her to show emotion, the influence that told her not to get too invested in things. Emily had been raised by a woman that negotiated peace treaties between warring nations; she saw most people in terms of numbers, in terms of their importance to the ambassadorial effort. Almost every day Emily regretted her bloodline; her mother was not a bad person, but her parenting techniques had been detrimental to say the least. And then the politics…

Emily pushed thoughts of her mother out of her mind, and attempted to focus on the scene at hand.

_‘Okay. There’s something here that may or may not be blood. Signs of a struggle?’_ She looked around, examining the surroundings of the area. She did not see anything that indicated a fight of some variety. She did see another dark stain; it was small, and she almost missed it. Another.

_‘It’s a trail_.’

A trail that led to the large dumpster at the end of the alleyway.

*             *             *

She put a hand to her sidearm, though she knew it was unlikely she would need it. People did not dump bodies and then stick around. She saw the flies emanating from the open lid, but did not panic yet; flies hung around garbage all the time. It didn’t necessarily mean there was a lifeless corpse inside.

Emily pushed away the emotion, trying not to think of the possibility that maybe her mother’s lessons did come in handy. She wanted to be able to feel her humanity, to feel shocked at the sight of a human body, and yet at the same time, she knew if she let it through then she would jeopardize her investigative skills. You couldn’t solve crime when you were curled in the fetal position, sobbing.

She ignored the smell, trying to breathe through her mouth instead. It was with curiosity that she peered into the open dumpster and found exactly what she didn’t want to find.

A body.


	3. Chapter 3

Standing in the office of Lieutenant Daniel Heller, Derek Morgan knew that something was wrong. There was a strange look on the Lieutenant’s face, as though something terrible had happened, and he was not quite sure how to respond.

‘Sit down, Morgan.’ Morgan simply stared. He had been running late that morning; it was five minutes to nine when he rushed into the locker room, scrambling to remove his shoes. No sooner than he had removed them, he was summoned to the Lieutenant’s office. To be reprimanded for his tardiness? He didn’t think so.

Heller gave a smile that contained no humor. He had been expecting this kind of stubbornness from the young officer. Already, he knew that Derek Morgan would go far.

‘An FBI Agent found a body in a dumpster this morning.’ He did not elaborate. Did not want to elaborate. It was hard enough losing officers, but informing the partners, the families? That was just as heartbreaking sometimes.

Morgan waited for the ton of bricks he knew was coming. There was just something in Heller’s voice that told him this was not just a body.

‘It was Pearson.’

Morgan felt the world drop away around him. He realized now why they always told family members to sit down when informing them of deaths. His legs felt like jelly. He knew that he would fall, would collapse if he stood any longer. He slumped into the chair that had been offered him.

He opened his mouth, wanted to ask how, when. All that came out was a rasping sound.

‘Single gunshot wound to the head.’ Heller knew what Morgan wanted to know, but it did not give him any satisfaction to shed light on the matter. ‘Initial coroner’s report suggests that he was killed sometime last night.’

Morgan was shocked. Frank Pearson was the last person who deserved to die. He was a good man; compassionate, strong-willed. He was the kind of man Morgan wanted to be some day. He felt his eyes watering, but he couldn’t cry – wouldn’t cry. He had to put his grief aside so he could bring justice to a murderer. He needed to find out who killed Frank Pearson.

Needed to find out why there was one less good person in the world.

*             *             *

Emily Prentiss found herself standing just beyond the boundaries of the crime scene, smoking a cigarette. After calling in the appropriate cavalry, she had then called SAC Wellington, informing him of the situation. He had given her a long sigh, as if it was somehow her fault that there was a body in a dumpster in the middle of Bucktown.

‘_Stay there_,’ he had said. ‘_I’ll send someone over_.’ It almost sounds as though it’s a burden.

Of course, “sending someone over” usually meant “you’ll be waiting three or four hours,” as it had the last time, and the time before that. She was beginning to wonder if any of it was actually worth it. Whether she could every break through the politics, break through the bureaucratic bullshit, break through the backstabbing. Whether she could ever find any of the important things, like truth, or justice, or even solace.

‘Excuse me?’ The voice tore her from her silent reverie.

‘Oh, motherfuck.’ She jumped backwards, knocking hot ash over her jacket. She took the cigarette out of her mouth as she tried to brush it off; she didn’t quite trust herself to multitask when there was fire involved.

‘Sorry.’ He was wearing jeans and a t-shirt, the tight fabric accentuating every muscle. There was a sad, distant look in his eyes.

‘No,’ she said, smiling nervously. ‘You just…you scared the crap out of me.’ She flicked the dead butt of the cigarette into a trash can. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘They told me that…uh…the off-duty police officer whose body you found,’ he started. She furrowed her brow. No-one had released that fact to the public, so she assumed that he must be involved in some way.

‘_Not in that t-shirt,_’ part of her said.

‘…he was my partner,’ the man continued. Upon seeing the look on her face, he clarified. ‘Uh…work partner, that is. Derek Morgan.’ He pulled his badge from his pocket, to show her that he was, in fact, telling the truth.

‘Emily Prentiss.’ She did not normally give out her first name as well, but this man looked as if he needed comfort beyond a detached agent. ‘…I’m sorry – about your partner, that is.’ It was all Emily could say, but somehow, it didn’t seem enough.

‘Is there anything you can tell me?’ In spite of the fact that he was clearly upset about the death of his partner, there was a fiery determination in the young officer’s voice.

Emily shrugged. ‘Not much to tell. There was a trail of blood leading to the dumpster, and then inside…’ She trailed off, and stared in the direction of the offending dumpster, where several crime scene techs were at work. ‘One of the store owners mentioned having heard a gunshot last night. Not exactly uncommon, sure, but the timing fits with the coroner’s findings.’

Morgan stared at the scene around him. He had been here only yesterday - it had seemed much less of a forbidding place then. He didn’t know if he would ever be able to come back, knowing what had happened here.

‘There was a kid. A homeless kid – Stevie,’ he told her. ‘I think Frank might have come back, to find out what happened to him. The detectives…they had too much on their plates, apparently.’ He spoke the last words with some derision, as if the heavy workload of the detectives was responsible for Frank’s death.

Emily nodded. ‘I was sent here to check that out.’ She put some emphasis on the word “was;” she was uncertain of whether that would still be the case. ‘But now, I’ve got to stick around this scene until I get further orders.’ However much she wanted to sound bitter, she kept the sarcasm out of her voice. Her anger was directed at Wellington, not at the inconvenience of Frank Pearson’s death. She knew how easy it would be to construe otherwise.

‘It can’t be a coincidence that Frank was killed here. Whoever took Stevie must have killed him to stop him from looking into it further.’

‘Wouldn’t killing a cop arouse even more suspicion?’ she asked him. He shrugged in reply.

‘I don’t know, I just…I _need _to find out who did this. Who killed my partner. I need to know for my sake, and for the sake of his family.’

Emily checked her watch. It would be at least another two hours before anyone else from the FBI would show up. At best, her time would have been spent standing around, destroying her lungs.

‘Come on then,’ she said. ‘Let’s go find a killer.’

*             *             *

When Steven Jasper Simmons awoke, it was with his arms tied, his eyes blindfolded, and his mouth gagged. His head was feeling slightly fuzzy, but he could still hear a pair of loud, angry voices that piqued his curiosity.

‘…you killed a fucking cop, are you stupid or something?’

‘He was sniffing about – he would have found something.’

‘The whole point was to stay _under _the radar. Why do you think we picked up some little shit no-one cares about? Jesus Christ.’

Stevie heard one set of feet storm off, slamming the door. That still left one person in the room.

The other set of feet grew louder and louder until they were standing right by his head. He thought he could just see them through the bottom of the blindfold. Then, the dark piece of material was ripped from his face completely.

‘It doesn’t matter.’ The man was at least twice Steven’s age, his hair starting to grey at the sides. He had a fair complexion, pale blue eyes that looked almost sickly. ‘There’s no-one coming for you, is there, Steven? That’s why we chose you.’

And then the man stood and walked off, leaving Steven Jasper Simmons to the darkness.


	4. Chapter 4

 ‘So you think that Pearson’s death is connected with Stevie’s disappearance?’ She had taken him to a coffee shop around the corner from the crime scene. He didn’t need to see the crime scene any more than he already had.

He stirred absent-mindedly at his coffee. When she had spoken of going to catch a killer, this was not what he had in mind. He felt the need to do something a little bit more proactive. Realistically, though, he knew she was right. They couldn’t charge right into things, they needed to look at this logically, and analytically. That, he knew, was the main reason he couldn’t do this alone; he would have been kicking down doors already.

‘I know it is.’

She nodded. The circumstances were a little too coincidental, she had to admit. Still, they had to investigate further to find concrete proof of the connection.

‘Then we need to talk to everyone Stevie knew.’

Morgan shrugged. ‘There’s just Rita. She loves that boy so much…’ He blinked away the tears in his eyes he knew he didn’t want her to see. It wasn’t just about Stevie. It was about Pearson, and it was about this whole fucked up situation.

‘What about his biological parents?’

‘They kicked him out. I don’t…Rita might know who they are, but I don’t know.’ He finished his coffee in one scalding gulp. They had something of a plan now; talk to Rita, find out where Stevie’s birth parents were, talk to them. He was ready, rearing to go.

Emily finished her own coffee, careful not to spill anymore on her blouse. The stain there already belied her image of professionalism. It was a façade that she had not yet properly fortified; all it took was one glancing blow for her to turn into, in her own words, a complete dork.

Rita was in the same place Morgan had seen her almost every day in the six months he had spent on the job. Her face was still splotched with tears. Morgan approached her cautiously – he didn’t want to upset her by being too forward.

‘Rita,’ he said gently. ‘This is Emily, she’s with the FBI. She’s going to help us find Stevie.’ He did not mention Pearson’s death. He did not want to bring it up, for fear that it would hurt her even more. He hoped that she would be too distracted by the thought of Stevie to notice the conspicuous absence.

‘Hi, Rita.’ Emily knelt down beside the woman, in an attempt to symbolically level the playing field. ‘I need to ask you a couple of questions, is that alright?’

Rita gave a sob, and then a nod.

‘Do you know who Stevie’s birth parents are? They might be able to help us find out where he is.’ Though she tried to keep her voice as compassionate as possible, the words seemed to strike a nerve with Rita.

‘They didn’t love him!’ she said fiercely. ‘They threw him out, because they couldn’t accept him for what he was.’ Emily hesitated slightly, and then put an arm around the sobbing woman, her nose almost imperceptibly wrinkled at the sudden increase of the intrusion to her olfactory senses. She rarely dealt with things like this, and was still struggling to find the appropriate level of compassion towards victims.

‘It’s okay,’ she said softly. ‘It’s okay. We know that they hurt him. We know that you loved him more than they ever could, but we need to speak to anyone who might know where he is. They will _not_ take him away from you, Rita.’

The cynic inside her added, ‘_If we even find him, that is._’

The words seemed to calm Rita down somewhat. ‘His last name…is Simmons. Steven Jasper Simmons. But…he left that behind him. He’s just Stevie now. Just my boy…’ She fell forward into Emily’s grasp, hugging the agent for dear life. Emily at first found herself uncomfortable at the intrusion of personal space, but soon warmed to the feeling of someone’s arms around her, in spite of the circumstances. It had been so long since she had found a real emotional connection with another human being. She had almost forgotten what it felt like.

Finally, Rita pulled away. She seemed to have been overcome by the situation.

‘Please find him,’ was all she said.

*             *             *

They knocked on the door of the Old Town condominium. There was several seconds of silence between them as they heard footsteps approaching the door. As the law enforcement officer who was technically on duty, Emily took point.

‘Marie Simmons?’ she asked of the middle-aged woman who answered the door. Her hair was perfectly coifed, her make-up flawless.

‘What’s this about?’

‘Agent Prentiss, FBI. This is Officer Morgan with the Chicago Police Department. We’d like to ask you a few questions about your son.’

‘I have no son,’ the woman replied coldly. Both Emily and Morgan were suddenly aware of a chill that went through the air.

‘Steven Jasper Simmons, born November 21st 1977?’ Emily asked with a raised eyebrow. What could Stevie have done to piss his parents off this much?

‘He is dead to me.’

Emily was no stranger to the difficulties in a relationship between a parent and a child. While her own bond with her mother had been somewhat distant, it had never progressed to outright hate.

‘If I might ask, what did Steven do that caused you to disown him?’ She tried as hard as possible to keep her words neutral; she did not want to lay blame this early in the conversation.

Marie shuddered, as if the whole experience was one that she would rather forget. ‘I came home one day, and he was in his bedroom…_doing things_ with another man.’ She took a deep breath, and Emily waited for her to continue before realizing that the woman was already finished. She could almost feel the change in atmospheric pressure as Morgan opened his mouth to say something behind her. Without looking back, she put a cautioning hand against his leg.

‘When was the last time you saw Steven?’

‘Over a year ago.’ The words held no emotion at all, as if Stevie really was dead to this woman. Emily felt the anger bristling inside her, but she said nothing. ‘What’s this about, Agent Prentiss?’

‘Your son is missing.’ She could not help but add the slightest touch of venom to her tone. ‘Is there anywhere he might have gone? Anyone that you know of who might have had motive to take him?’

Emily already knew that this woman would be of no help to them; she did not know where her son was, nor did she care. Still, she took the time to ask the routine questions. Five minutes later, the door was shut curtly in their faces.

*             *             *

‘What the hell was that?’ asked Morgan, the moment they were out of earshot. Emily could almost see the fire in his eyes. She had expected him to be annoyed at her for stopping him from lashing out, but not this angry.

‘We can’t afford to insult the people we’re talking to,’ she told him, her voice slightly louder than she had intended. ‘Yes, I get it. She was a horrible mother, and I seriously hate her for that, I do. But if we go around yelling at everyone that mistreated Stevie, then they aren’t going to answer any of our questions.’ She stepped back, realizing only then that she had been almost in his face. ‘Sorry,’ she added, this time far more quietly.

Morgan nodded. He too seemed to have calmed down somewhat. ‘I guess…I think it’s wrong. I think it’s wrong for a mother to kick out her only child because of who he is. I think it’s stupid that so much crap can happen to one kid, when people like his mother are living the high life.’

‘That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?’ asked Emily. She had a half smile on her face, though its level of humor was arguable. ‘To make sure that Stevie doesn’t fall between the cracks.’

Morgan nodded.

Because nobody should ever fall through the cracks.


	5. Chapter 5

Emily pulled a notebook from the glove compartment, flipping to the first empty page. Morgan eyed her with curiosity as she wrote quickly, but neatly.

‘We didn’t get anything from that,’ he commented. ‘Apart from the fact that his parents are complete bigots. Why are you writing it down?’

She looked almost embarrassed. Her blatant – almost innocent – enthusiasm upon joining the Chicago Field Office had been the target of much ridicule, yet she refused to give up. She would tolerate the backstabbing, and the politics, and generally inefficiency of the whole thing, but she would not give up. Because that’s what they wanted her to do. They wanted her to throw in the towel, and admit she was just riding on her mother’s coat-tails. And that was one thing Emily Prentiss would never do.

‘I’m just, uh...Just being thorough,’ she finished lamely.

But that wasn’t all there was to it. The fact of the matter was, she knew Frank Pearson had died investigating this case, and if they were going to die too, then she at least wanted an accurate record of the clues they had followed up on so far. She found it strange, almost, that the thought of dying didn’t really seem to bother her. Sacrifice was just another part of the job.

He nodded. ‘So what do we think?’ He was priming his own brain cells as much as he was hers.

‘Well his parents are well off, but they would never pay ransom. So it’s not money.’

‘And whoever it was went to the trouble of killing Frank, so we know he doesn’t have any qualms about murder.’ His worked to keep his voice free from emotion when talking about his former partner, but he had to admit, it was difficult. ‘There must be some reason why he’s keeping Stevie alive.’

Emily added his thoughts to the notebook page. ‘Does it feel almost...random to you? He definitely needs Stevie alive for something, but only took him in the first place because...’ she paused slightly, casting a sideways glance at Morgan. ‘Maybe...he thought that people would care less. That they wouldn’t investigate.’ The thought had been running through her head all day. ‘As though it only seemed to matter when a police officer ended up dead.’ She cursed herself mentally, realizing that she’d almost insinuated that Frank’s death didn’t matter. Fortunately, though, Morgan did not take her words as such.

He nodded again. ‘Do you think it could be serial?’ he asked.

Emily furrowed her brow. In the academy, she had been warned against so called “Federal Agents’ Syndrome” in which agents found evidence when there was none, simply because they were looking. If they were to jump to conclusions, then the whole case could become overblown rather quickly.

‘It’s possible,’ was the answer she settled on. ‘But we’d have to look into it further.’

He opened his mouth, but before he could speak, there was a sharp knock on the driver’s side window.

‘Jesus!’ Emily jumped in surprise, which was in turn, no surprise to Morgan.

She swore once more, this time a little more explicitly when she looked out the window and saw who it was.

They were parked just down the block from the crime scene; most of the police cruisers that had been there earlier that morning had disappeared, only to be replaced by non-descript black sedans. The FBI was here.

‘Give me a sec,’ she muttered to Morgan, exiting the car quickly. This was not going to be pretty. It was never pretty, she knew, but today it was going to be downright gruesome.

‘Sir,’ she greeted Agent Wellington, mentally kicking herself. When he had said he was sending someone over, she wasn’t expecting him to come himself. _‘Were his eyes always so raving?’_ she wondered to herself.

‘I told you to stay here, Prentiss.’ Though he wasn’t yelling, she knew he was angry. He had the strangest ability to look absolutely terrifying without even trying. Emily wasn’t fazed though; while she admitted he made her slightly nervous, she had grown up with a woman that ate people like Wellington for breakfast.

‘With all due respect, sir, that’s bullshit.’ Her eyebrows were raised, as if she was surprised by her own tenacity. ‘I can be of far more use actually _investigating _the crime rather than standing around waiting for you to show up.’

He didn’t say anything, and this, she knew, was the worst possible response. It was the calm before the storm. She’d be trudging through sewerage pipes for the next seventeen years.

*             *             *

Morgan heard every word of the conversation between Emily and Wellington. Sensing that his presence would not exactly smooth things over, he left as quietly as he could. At a loss for anything else to do, he found himself walking down the street aimlessly, mind filled with thoughts.

‘Hey! Excuse me!’ The calls were directed at him, he realized. He stopped, and turned, just in time to see a young man almost barrel into him. He was in his early twenties, Morgan thought. Homeless, definitely. ‘You’re the...uh...police guy? Wanted to know if I’d seen anything suspicious?’

Morgan nodded. Vaguely, he wondered if this man even knew what had happened to Pearson. He had to have known – there had been a heavy law enforcement presence in the area all morning.

‘The night before last, there was this guy. Maybe forty, greyish hair. He and Stevie got into a scuffle. I didn’t say anything yesterday, ‘cos he was hanging around. I think he wanted to know if anyone was going to turn him in. I was scared, man – didn’t want to say anything.’

‘Can you give me a more detailed description?’ He almost laughed when he realized that he didn’t even have a pen and paper on him. Maybe Emily’s methods did have some merit after all. He attempted to catalogue the information inside his memory instead.

‘Hey,’ Morgan called out to the man, who had turned tail upon the removal of his burden. ‘What’s your name?’

There was a look of hesitation, as if revealing this part of himself to Morgan could only end badly. ‘Eric,’ he said eventually.

‘You’re around these parts most of the time?’

‘Yeah.’

Morgan gave the young man a half smile. ‘Be careful, Eric.’

*             *             *

When he returned to the car, Emily was leaning against it, sucking in a lungful of cigarette smoke. The look in her eyes told him that she was barely concealing her anger.

He tried to give her a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry.’ He felt responsible – he had dragged her into this, though she hadn’t needed much persuasion.

‘Don’t be,’ she said darkly. ‘You’re not the one that decided I needed a few days of “cooling off time.” Seriously, he couldn’t just come right out and tell me that he didn’t like the way I was doing things?’ She shook her head.

‘Wait?’ asked Morgan. ‘He _suspended _you?’ The young officer was incredulous. All Emily had been doing was trying to help him find Stevie’s kidnapped – Pearson’s killer. Surely that didn’t warrant such severe punishment.

‘That’s Special Agent Asshole for you.’ She sighed, flicking the butt to the ground. She could not honestly give a crap about littering laws right at this time. ‘I hope you find what you’re looking for, Officer Morgan. Don’t worry; the FBI have their best agents on the case.’ The last sentence she spoke with something of an exaggerated eye roll, as if she didn’t even believe it herself.

And before Morgan had a chance to convince her otherwise, she had gone.


	6. Chapter 6

The moment she hit the first red traffic light, Emily Prentiss rested her head against the steering wheel. ‘God damnit.’ She said it softly at first, then a little loud. She wanted to thump something, but that wasn’t the most advisable course of action at the wheel of a car.

She hadn’t exploded at the scene – that was something. All she had really wanted to do was tell Wellington every single grievance he had bestowed upon her in the past eight months, and then leave in a huff. But no. That would have been throwing away any chance she had of moving past this, of rising to position where she wouldn’t have to deal with people like Max Wellington. In any case, she had learnt from a young age to keep her temper tantrums private.

What had hurt her more than Wellington’s actions had been the look on Derek Morgan’s face when she had driven off. Pain, disbelief. She wanted to help him, she really did, but Wellington had taken her badge and gun. Without her credentials and with Wellington sniffing around, she was of no help to him. He would have better luck solving the case with the help of seasoned agents; people who had been working the job for far longer than she had.

A car horn beeped from behind her. She lifted her head, realizing that the light had gone green. She drove in silence, all the while thinking: _‘What the hell am I going to do now?’_

*             *             *

Special Agent in Charge Max Wellington did not consider himself a jerk. He knew what the rest of the agents in his division thought; hardass, shows signs of favouritism, quite possibly bipolar and so on and so forth. Wellington heard all these complaints, and dismissed them entirely. He was nothing if not pragmatic.

He had not suspended Prentiss out of spite – if anything, he was impressed with her skills. But in the Violent Crimes task force of the Chicago Field Office, no-one got an easy ride. Agents fresh out of training had to learn quickly that the FBI was not a cakewalk, that people didn’t think this job was simply an opportunity to carry a badge and a gun. It was so much more than that. It just took a little tough love for some of them to realize it.

Prentiss was better than most of them, he knew. She had taken some of the worst crap he could throw at her. A side effect, he thought, of growing up with politicians. The one thing he hadn’t taught her yet was how to let go. He just hoped that it wasn’t too late.

*             *             *

Morgan was hesitant in his approach to SAIC Wellington. He had heard the criticism this man had dished out on Emily, and wasn’t quite sure whether he wanted to punch him, or ask for his help.

‘Special Agent Wellington?’ he tried. The older man turned to face him, frustration in his eyes. Morgan was unsure of the source of the frustration, but was fairly sure it had something to do with a murdered police officer.

‘Officer Morgan. Frank Pearson was my partner.’

Wellington nodded. ‘I’m going to have to ask you a few questions later, but now...’ He gestured to the crime scene.

‘I just wanted to tell you...yesterday, we were looking into the disappearance of a local homeless teenager – Stevie. I think Frank came back to keep looking for information, and someone killed him for it.’

Wellington sighed internally. Give a guy a badge, and he automatically thought he was Sherlock fucking Holmes. Investigate work took experience – experience that this fresh-faced officer didn’t have.

‘With all due respect, Officer Morgan, we’re treating this case as an isolated incident. There’s nothing to suggest that Officer Pearson’s death is in any way linked to the disappearance of Shawn.’

Morgan furrowed his brow. This agent wasn’t even willing to consider the possibility that the two events were linked. He didn’t even care. ‘Stevie,’ he said eventually.

‘I’m sorry?’ Wellington asked.

‘His name is Stevie,’ Morgan said, before leaving SAIC Wellington to his business.


	7. Chapter 7

Feeling frustrated and just the slightest bit dejected, Morgan found himself following Emily’s suggestion. Everything he knew and everything he might know was all going down on paper. Technically speaking, it was going down on a napkin, but he had to start somewhere.

It was nearing late afternoon, and he had made little to no development since Emily’s departure and Wellington’s snubbing. Though he was loath to admit it, he needed help. There was a reason law enforcement officers worked in pairs; beyond watching each others’ backs, a partner was someone who you could bounce ideas off, who would fill in the gaps where you found yourself lacking.

He knew, realistically, that he wasn’t going to solve this on his own. He needed someone that was willing to help, someone that had had his back for almost every step of the way so far.

‘_You know what you need to do, Derek.’_

Sighing, he put the balled up napkin in his pocket, returning the pen to the waitress he had borrowed it off, in addition to a wink and a ten dollar tip.

Derek Morgan had a federal agent to track down.

*             *             *

Emily Prentiss was at the very least, tipsy. She was not normally one to drink away her troubles, but she had been incredibly frustrated at the events of the morning, and had thought that one glass wouldn’t hurt. That, of course, was three glasses ago.

There was a pile of tapes sitting next to the VCR; things she had taped weeks, even months ago, and was just now getting the chance to watch. Of course, these television shows usually made a lot more sense sober.

The first knock of the door, she didn’t register. The second, she heard, but it took her several seconds to understand that it was, in fact, someone knocking on the door.

‘I’m coming,’ she called out, sounding a little more frustrated than she had intended. It had taken several seconds to find the remote control, and several more to find the pause button.

‘_Who could possibly be knocking at the door this time of night?_’ She checked her watch and realized that it had barely gone seven o’clock. She had started drinking earlier than she’d thought.

She looked through the peephole, and saw the face she had been expecting to see all afternoon. She knew he would have made it here eventually, and if she were to be honest with herself, she had been almost looking forward to it.

Taking a deep breath, she drew back the dead-bolt and opened the door.

*             *             *

Morgan stood at the doorstep with some trepidation.

He didn’t usually do this.

He didn’t usually stand at the door of a woman he’d met just that day, with a bottle of wine in one hand, and a bag of Chinese food in the other. He was something of a ladies’ man, yes, but on most occasions, he preferred to let the woman actually know that he was coming.

He knocked a second time, and let out a breath he didn’t realize he had been holding when he heard her voice.

Seconds later, the door swung open.

‘You interrupted Buffy,’ she said pointedly, arms folded across her chest. It took him a few seconds to realize that she was joking.

‘_She looks nice_,’ he thought. In jeans and a loose sweatshirt, she had dropped the façade of professionalism, but still retained something of a casual elegance. It didn’t surprise him, considering she lived in a neighborhood like this one. There was definitely money in her background.

She stepped back to let him in, and he got a proper view of her apartment. Sophisticated, but not snobbishly so. Style, but not to the point that character was forgotten.

‘Bowls are in the cupboard under the counter – no, the left one.’ She nodded as he found the right cupboard, and withdrew two bowls.

‘Fork or chopsticks?’

‘Chopsticks are fine.’ As he served the food into the bowls, she found him a clean glass.

‘Are you okay to start with red?’ She indicated the bottle that was already open. She didn’t need the temptation of _two _open bottles.

‘Yeah.’

They sat across from each other at her small kitchen table. It didn’t feel right to talk about the case just yet, and talking about anything else felt almost awkward.

Morgan’s eyes drifted towards the bookshelf on the opposite wall, and, scanning its titles, he found a topic worthy of discussion.

‘_Mother Night _or _Slaughterhouse-Five_?’

Her brow furrowed slightly, as if she had not been expecting a question of that nature. Upon realizing that he was serious, she relaxed slightly, smiling.

‘That’s a tough one. I can’t pick both?’ She almost pouting as she said it.

‘Nope. That’s cheating.’

She gave a dramatic sigh. ‘Fine. _Mother Night_. I guess I kind of relate to the whole “pretending to be someone else” thing.’

‘Rough childhood?’

She gave a sarcastic laugh. ‘My mother is in politics,’ she said, as if that explained everything. At his inquisitive expression, she elaborated. ‘You get used to being who people want you to be. Sometimes you lose yourself along the way, I guess.’ She sniffed back a sob. ‘I’m sorry. I’m pretty sure that’s the wine talking.’

‘My father died when I was ten,’ Morgan said suddenly. ‘I spent my whole life trying to be the person he was. Now I’m not sure if I can.’

‘What kind of person was he?’

‘He was a good guy. The guy that people liked, the guy that would give up everything for someone else.’ His eyes drifted; he didn’t want her to see them watering. All the people he looked up to seemed to die – was that all on him, he wondered.

‘You _are_ a good guy.’ She spoke with such fierceness, that he half expected it to be the wine talking again, but then he saw the determined look in her eyes. ‘You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. You wouldn’t care as much as you do.’

Their shared confessions had lightened the atmosphere somewhat. As a consequence, they could now discuss the case without too many awkward moments.

‘Alright then, Officer Morgan,’ Emily said. ‘Let’s brainstorm.’

*             *             *

Eric Carlson found a fist striking his face. It was unexpected, especially considering the fact he had done his very best to stay _away_ from the gang violence that the city was rife with. It added insult to injury that he recognized the face; this was the man who had attacked that kid, Stevie, just two nights ago.

‘What the fuck, man?’ It was hard to speak, with blood dripping from his nose. He had the sinking feeling he knew why this man was here; it wasn’t to beat him up. ‘I didn’t tell the cops shit,’ he lied. It didn’t really seem to matter anymore.

If this man had his way, by the end of the night, Eric Carlson would become just another person who had fallen off the edge of the world.


	8. Chapter 8

It was almost eleven when Emily finally put her pen down. They had made some headway, listing possible motives and connections, but there was no real casebreaking evidence that could tell them just what had happened to Steven Simmons. An hour later, their wine-fueled conversation had turned to other, related matters.

‘I just…I worked so _fucking_ hard to get in this position, and they don’t even give a fuck. It’s like…they think just because…just because…’ She stopped, unable to think of the appropriate words to finish the sentence.

‘I hear you,’ replied Morgan darkly. He was slightly less inebriated than she, but no less dejected. ‘”Oh, don’t worry kid. We’ve got this sorted. We’ll catch the bad man who killed your partner.”’

They were sitting on her leather couch, feet unceremoniously planted on the coffee table. She rolled slightly to face him. ‘Screw them. Let’s start our own crime-fighting duo.’

Morgan gave a half smile. He was sober enough to realize that that was probably taking it a little bit too far.

‘Think about it,’ she continued, slightly slurred, but he wasn’t listening. He was too busy looking at her face. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. ‘Sculder and Mully, they disagree about things a bit, but they get things done…and…and…Xena and Gabrielle – they balance each other out, you know?’ She was almost about to start talking again when Morgan leaned forward and kissed her.

At first, Emily was confused, and slightly irritated at the fact that he had interrupted her. Then she felt the warmth of him pressed up against her. She had forgotten how nice it was to just have someone…there.

She let him adjust their position, so she was lying beneath him on the couch, their lips struggling to remain more than an inch apart. ‘Soft lips,’ she murmured, when they finally came up for air. Her hands went straight to his shirt, running them across the firm stomach muscles beneath it. ‘And a _very_ nice chest.’ With only a small amount of resistance, she managed to lift the shirt over his head, discarding it on the coffee table.

‘Are you sure you want to do this?’ Morgan asked. He knew they were both in something of a dark place, and he did not want that to lead to further complications.

She made a slightly derisive sound. ‘Morgan, I’ve been doing _this_ since you were in grade school.’

Taking Emily’s words as a confirmation of her willingness, his own hands began to roam. She arched backwards as his fingers brushed across the fabric of her bra. She let out a moan that was muffled by his lips against hers. A second later, she became aware of the bareness of her upper torso, and a second after that, she felt those soft lips kissing the skin of her breast.

‘Condom,’ Emily reminded him, as his hands repositioned themselves on her belt buckle. He stopped.

‘I didn’t bring any with me.’

Emily bit her lip. ‘I’ve got some. I think. But if I don’t, we can’t…’ She trailed off, her expression vacant. Morgan almost got the impression that she was thinking of something else entirely. He nodded, lifting so that she could slide out from under him. Once standing, she covered her chest, as if embarrassed to be seen whilst not in the throes of passion.

Less than a minute later, she returned, unopened box in hand. ‘How many do you think we’ll need?’ joked Morgan. She hit him playfully on the chest, and then made a surprised yelp when he took her by the waist and pulled her back onto the couch.

Her fingers worked at his pants button, frustrated. ‘I can’t get your pants off.’ She sounded disappointed at her inability to perform intricate motor functions under the influence of alcohol.

Laughing, he lifted his mouth from her neck to focus his attention on helping her remove his pants. No sooner than he had unfastened them, she slipped her hand inside.

‘I want you inside of me,’ she said, and when she had purged the alcohol from her system, she would find herself embarrassed at having used such a clichéd term. At that point, though, Morgan didn’t seem to mind. Having relieved himself of his own pants, he went to work on hers, determined not to be interrupted this time.

The next time he lifted, it was that he could roll the condom on. Emily gave an involuntary gasp, which gave him reason to pause.

‘Are you alright?’ he asked.

‘I’m…I just…It’s very big,’ she finished lamely. She found herself becoming more and more flustered.  ‘I’m used to something a little smaller. I don’t really do this very often. I mean I have done it before, but…Oh God!’ She found herself choking on air as he slid into her. The gasping was soon replaced by protracted moans from both of them.

Further brainstorming could wait until morning.


	9. Chapter 9

When Derek Morgan awoke, it was naked, in an unfamiliar bed, and with Emily Prentiss asleep next to him. He remembered the previous night with perfect clarity, and he didn’t regret a second of it. After the first time, they had slowly but surely relocated upstairs, where they had continued their efforts in making the pain go away, so to speak. It was no wonder she was still sleeping.

Not for long, though, it seemed. His stirring had drawn her from her slumber, and she blinked several times, in an attempt, he assumed to recall post-alcohol activities.

‘How’s the head?’ he asked her. Though he had done his own share of drinking the night away, his mind was strangely clear. But then, he had always had a respectable tolerance for alcohol.

‘I think it’s trying to have a baby,’ she muttered, trying to sit up. Even that was fraught with pain. ‘Remind me never to have angry sex with you again. Christ, I don’t think I’m going to be able to walk today.’

He grinned. Hungover though she was, she didn’t appear to be regretting the events that had led to her debilitation.

‘I’ll get you some water. Aspirin?’

‘Thanks.’

She watched him extricate himself from the tangle of sheets, appreciating the view as he searched for the pants that were nowhere in sight.

‘_Look at him,_’ she thought. ‘_No wonder you’re so sore._’

‘Do you like pancakes?’ he asked, admitting defeat in his search for pants. It wasn’t as though he had anything to be ashamed of. Derek Morgan took care of his body.

‘Pancakes would be nice,’ she admitted. He gave a warm smile, and left the bedroom.

‘_What a guy. He fucks you senseless, and now he’s making you pancakes. Don’t screw this one up._’

She had just made it out of bed, and was searching for clean underwear when he came upstairs with a glass of water and two Aspirin. Briefly, she wondered how he had found the Aspirin, but then she remembered that he worked in law enforcement. Her head had cleared somewhat since her awakening, and she could now recall in fairly high detail her own actions the night before.

‘I’m sorry for being such a dork last night. I’m usually a little better at hiding it.’

He gave a grin, revealing a smile that, Emily thought, was just as nice as the rest of him.

‘I’m pretty sure you more than made up for it,’ he laughed. Blushing slightly, she took the water and Aspirin from him, swallowing them quickly.

‘Let’s just say that being a dork is my only regret,’ she said. ‘But right now, I need to have a shower. I think I’m still covered in sweat, amongst other things.’ She paled then, realizing what she had said. ‘It’s entirely possible that my dorkiness isn’t just a product of alcohol.’

He leant down and kissed her softly on the forehead. ‘I think I’m entirely okay with that.’

*             *             *

She came downstairs to the sound of a pan sizzling on the stove, wincing with every step. She’d dressed carefully in a pair of dark slacks and a button up shirt, but she still couldn’t quite shake the feeling that it was painstakingly obvious what she had done the night before.

_‘My God,_’ she thought. ‘_He really _is _making pancakes._’

‘You don’t really have that much food in this place,’ he teased. ‘I’m not sure how a person is supposed to survive on milk, eggs and bread.’

‘There’s other stuff,’ she protested. ‘Rice. Flour.’ She stopped, struggling to remember just what was in her kitchen. ‘Coffee?’

‘That doesn’t count.’

Determined to prove him wrong, Emily checked the cupboard for herself, only to find that his words were no exaggeration.

‘I guess I need to go shopping. I spend so much time at work that I only really come here to sleep, and sometimes even that’s questionable. None of it really matters now,’ she added bitterly.

‘We’ve still got our own investigation to run,’ he reminded her, gesturing toward the piles of paper that were now scattered across the floor. He felt a slight twinge of guilt, recalling how he had pushed their brainstorming notes off the table in their desperate whirlwind of love-making.

‘I haven’t forgotten,’ she replied, with a smile on her face. He was nothing if not dedicated to making sure that the lowest common denominator was represented.

Their morning was planned out as such: return to Bucktown, see if anyone had seen the man that was described to Morgan. Beyond that, they weren’t entirely sure which direction to go in; they had a lot of unfounded theories, and very few actual facts.

But first, pancakes.

In spite of the nausea that still ravaged her stomach, Emily found herself ravenous. It was one of those hangover paradoxes that she’d never quite managed to work her way around.

‘These are fucking fantastic pancakes,’ she said after a couple of bites. ‘And I’m not just saying that because the last time I actually ate breakfast was a stale bagel four days ago.’ She gave him a look. ‘Not including coffee.’

‘Did you want to shower?’ she asked him, as they cleaned up the breakfast dishes. Quite frankly, she was impressed at how put together he was that morning. She couldn’t tell from looking at him that most of the night had been dedicated to strenuous physical activity.

‘_He’s a fucking machine._’

‘You’ve got time,’ she added. ‘I’m pretty sure I’m not quite ready to face the world outside yet.’

‘Ten minutes,’ he offered. She wrinkled her brow. Ten minutes, she could probably do.

‘Towels are in the hall cupboard. There’s soap, shampoo…’ she trailed off, fairly sure that after twenty-four years, he probably already knew the steps involved in showering.

After eleven minutes and twenty-three seconds, they were out the door.

*             *             *

‘Mrs. Carlson,’ Emily greeted her eighty-three year old neighbor in the elevator.

‘Oh, hello dear.’ Though not as young as she once was, Mabel Carlson was sharp for her age. She had lived in the apartment complex for over seventeen years, watching the comings and goings of various tenants. Though she was rarely there, Emily Prentiss was one of the better ones.

‘Was that you screaming last night, dear?’ Mabel asked curiously, the innocent tone of her voice indicating that she knew nothing of the implications of her question.

Emily’s mouth opened in horror, and, blushing, she turned as to avoid Mabel’s eye contact. Fortunately, Morgan was on the ball.

‘We were watching _The Exorcist_,’ he supplied. ‘It uh…got a little bit scary in parts.’

Emily nodded. With the pounding of her head, and the embarrassment that had just overcome her, she couldn’t think of the words to say.

‘Oh,’ was Mabel’s reply. ‘At first, I thought…Oh, never mind. It’s silly.’ She paused, assessing Emily’s appearance. ‘You look very nice today, dear. Very glowing.’ She bid them farewell as she left the elevator at the ground floor. Far less enthusiastically, Emily and Morgan followed.

There was work to be done.


	10. Chapter 10

Morgan gave a sideways grin as Emily attempted to hide her bloodshot eyes with a pair of dark sunglasses. Her head and most of the rest of her body were still aching, and the feeling would probably persist for most of the day.

‘I guess this is why you aren’t supposed to drink on a weeknight,’ she muttered, giving him a dark look. She’d only had a couple of glasses more than him, and yet he seemed completely clear-headed. He could walk properly, too.

They had returned to that street in Bucktown that Morgan had frequented countless times over his period in the Chicago Police Force. Even if they found Frank’s killer, Stevie’s kidnapper, he was sure that he never wanted to come back to this street again. Those desires would have to wait for a while.

‘So,’ Morgan started. ‘We’re asked if anyone’s seen a suspicious looking white guy in his forties.’

Emily snorted. ‘Sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that...it doesn’t really narrow it down much.’

Morgan’s face was grim. ‘I know. But we can’t give up. Everyone else has.’

‘I’m not suggesting we give up,’ Emily said brusquely. ‘I’m just saying that it might not be as easy as we want it to be.’ She wasn’t angry at him, per se, she was angry at the fact that her head wouldn’t stop pounding, no matter how much water she drank. She was angry at the fact that they were the only ones who even seemed to care. In her experience, that happened a lot. You couldn’t change what other people did, but you could change what _you_ did.

‘Sorry,’ she said again. She never really dealt with hangovers well. If it weren’t for the investigation, she would have isolated herself from the outside world, for fear that she might do something regrettable.

Morgan scanned the area briefly for Eric, the young homeless man who had given him the description. His cursory glance did not reveal anything. Eric wasn’t around just then.

To Morgan, it spoke volumes that the FBI weren’t even there, save for the suspended agent at his side. If he were to take a guess, though, he would put it down to the inefficiencies of the SIAC, rather than those of the Bureau itself.

‘Did you want to split up?’ suggested Emily, though she wasn’t particularly keen on the idea. They’d be able to cover more ground, but truth be told, she had become accustomed to Morgan’s presence, though their acquaintance had been short.

‘Not really,’ he confessed, which took a weight off her shoulders. ‘I’m not so experience with the whole “investigatory” thing. Being a beat cop is more about keeping the peace.’

She shrugged. ‘They’re not mutually exclusive. Just because you’re investigating, doesn’t mean you should ignore the little stuff. Some people just...choose to ignore the little stuff.’ She finished it as delicately as she was able; she didn’t want to disillusion him. Just because there were idiots in the world didn’t mean he should give up on the whole idea of justice.

Of those they spoke to that day, very few had seen a man that matched the description Eric had given them. Most actually seemed suspicious of _them_, as they were both effectively civilians for the time being.

It was almost midday when Morgan was approached. The man looked strangely familiar; it was a few seconds before his memory placed him as the smoking man he had spoken to regarding Stevie’s disappearance just two days earlier.

‘I’m sorry about your partner,’ he said. He seemed slightly jittery, as if he was afraid that someone might see that he was talking to them. Both Morgan and Emily noticed this behavior. They also noticed the untreated wounds that seemed to cover this man’s skin. ‘Listen,’ he continued. ‘Word on the street...they’re saying...a bunch of guys, kidnapping young men. No-one over the age of twenty-five.’

‘What’re they doing to them?’ asked Morgan, afraid that he already knew the answer.

The man paused, clearly uncomfortable with the subject matter. ‘They’re hiring them out. “Loaning” them out for...sex, beating. Really sadist stuff.’

Emily saw Morgan stiffen, and she wasn’t surprised. He had postulated that this was a serial thing, but this was far worse than either of them had imagined.

‘Where did you hear this?’ His tone was flat, and there was some anger in it, as if he was trying to hold back.

The man shrugged. ‘Like I said, word on the street. No guarantee that the person I heard it from knows anything at all.’

Morgan sensed that the man was lying. Taking him by the collar, he shoved him against the nearby brick wall. ‘Where did you hear it?!’ The anger was no longer repressed. There was a fire in his eyes that Emily had not seen in the short time that she had known him.

‘Morgan,’ she said quietly, putting a hand on his shoulder. ‘This isn’t helping.’

He stepped back, letting the man drop to the floor. ‘I like to get...release, sometimes,’ he revealed. He didn’t seem to be angry for what Morgan had done. ‘I don’t usually go to this place, but an acquaintance recommended it. Said that the rates were low, and the fare was reasonably good. I went there, checked it out. At least half the people they’ve got there are there unwillingly. Not just men. Some women, some kids. But the guys that took Stevie – they’re responsible for the men.’

He gave them the location and then fled before either could stop him. Morgan’s anger had not subsided, and chasing after a possible suspect was not something that he needed to be doing.

‘Lunch,’ instructed Emily, leading him to the coffee shop where they had spent some time yesterday. He needed the cooling off period, that much was clear.

*             *             *

He started blankly at the menu while Emily wrote down the address that had been given them. They couldn’t very well go storming in themselves, without so much as a back-up weapon between them. That would be their last resort.

It wasn’t until their meals had arrived that he said anything.

‘After my father died, I got into some heavy stuff. I was running for gangs...did some things I really shouldn’t have done. The guy that ran the local community center – Carl – he pulled me out of all that. Helped me set my life straight...But...not without...’

Realization dawned on Emily. ‘Not without taking something in return,’ she concluded. He nodded, and she could just see the tears shining in his eyes. She put a hand on his. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

He smiled through a choked sob. ‘I’ve never told anyone that before.’

‘Yeah,’ she said, staring at her untouched sandwich. ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’


	11. Chapter 11

Emily sat outside her supervisor’s office, tapping her foot impatiently. One of her colleagues gave her a sympathetic look; Wellington’s office was not the place you wanted to be if you’d been suspended the previous day. These were special circumstances though – Emily knew that someone would probably end up dead if someone didn’t send a team to the address they had been given. Whose death it was, she couldn’t say.

She was fairly certain Wellington was keeping her outside just to torture her slowly – it was something he seemed to revel in doing. She had heard the some sociopaths manifested their tendencies into business ventures, and the like. She wondered if Wellington was directing his own sociopathic energies into pissing her off.

After what seemed like forever, the door finally swung open, and Wellington stepped out. He raised an eyebrow. Usually suspension meant an agent took the chance to get _away_ from the office.

‘Prentiss,’ he said evenly.

‘Sir.’ She tried so hard not to put venom into the word, but it was difficult when your boss was the biggest ass that walked the planet. How he’d gotten to become the SAIC, she’d never know.

Her headache had subsided, and her eyes were a little less bloodshot – a fact that she was grateful for. She didn’t need any flaws for Wellington to pick out and over-exaggerate.

‘You wanted to see me, Prentiss.’

‘Yes sir.’ She glanced around momentarily. She didn’t want to do this where everyone could see; it would only make the inevitable beatdown all the more embarrassing for her. At the very least, though, she was determined to try.

He relented slightly, stepping back so she could enter the office. He shut the door pointedly behind her. He seemed to care just as much as her about not making a scene, though, she wagered, for far different reasons.

‘Coming into the office isn’t exactly the best way of “cooling down,” Prentiss,’ he said eventually. ‘Suspended means you _don’t _come in.’

Emily ignored the caustic tone, and tried to make a case for herself. ‘I was with Pearson’s partner. We were asking around, seeing if anybody saw anything. A guy came forward and said that there’s an underground prostitution ring – women, kids, young men. That a group of guys kidnapped Stevie so that he could be…used. He gave us an address.’ She flicked the piece of paper onto the desk in front of her, watching Wellington’s expression.

He sighed. It wasn’t the reaction she had wanted. But it was the reaction she had expected.

‘You can’t just go around believing everything witnesses tell you, Prentiss. A little selectivity is what being an investigator is all about.’

Her look could have sent a lesser man to tears. ‘So what, we don’t even look into this? I guess I must have missed the memo that said we weren’t supposed to at least _check out_ leads. Maybe next time I’ll just stay around make sure that my desk is sufficiently polished instead of trying to catch a killer.’

She didn’t even wait for him to kick her out. She was already slamming the door.

*             *             *

Elsewhere, Morgan was having similar luck, but for different reasons.

‘It’s the FBI’s case, now, Officer Morgan. I can’t just intervene and send my own men in. It would completely undermine jurisdictional protocol.’

Detective Hamilton gave a pained smile. Morgan knew the detective would have helped if he could, but it was that stupid bureaucracy thing getting in the way again. It seemed to be a recurring theme. It was a horrifying thought; that people could be dying in the truckloads, simply because one agency didn’t want to step on another one’s toes, or because someone decided that they didn’t feel like filling out the paperwork today. It was an endless cycle, and it frustrated the hell out of him. One day, he wanted to be somewhere where he could make a real difference.

‘Thanks anyway,’ said Morgan bitterly, leaving the address of Stevie’s supposed location on Hamilton’s desk. Chances were that after tonight, someone would need it.

*             *             *

‘This is completely fucked up,’ Morgan said into his coffee. ‘We know where he is, and yet we can’t do anything about it? What happened to Serve and Protect? What happened to Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity? Now it’s all about the fucking politics. No-one gives a shit about the little guy.’

‘So what’re we supposed to do now?’

She let the question hang in the air, although they both already knew the answer.

They’d have to check it out themselves.


	12. Chapter 12

‘So,’ started Morgan, ‘We need to infiltrate a building. One weapon, no back-up. Ideas?’

‘My first thought?’ Emily wondered aloud. ‘Don’t. We’re in over our heads, and we should back off…potentially leaving a lot of innocent people to get hurt.’ Really, she had no intention of backing off, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t allowed to examine the risks. ‘We can’t leave them there,’ she added softly.

Morgan nodded. ‘Brute force isn’t going to work. We’ve got a single pistol between the two of us, and they’re bound to have much more than that, if they’re trafficking humans.’

‘”All warfare is based on deception,”’ Emily quoted, at Morgan’s raised eyebrow adding, ‘Sun Tzu.’

‘So, what,’ he said. ‘Go in there pretending to be a potential customer?’ His nose wrinkled. He wasn’t quite sure he could suppress the anger long enough to pull off that ruse.

‘How else are we supposed to get in there?’ she asked. She, too, didn’t see the appeal in that plan. It would involve a lot of luck on their part. Still, there wasn’t much else they could do.

They were in Emily’s apartment, spitballing ideas as to the best way to proceed. The location given to them was their only lead, and, trap or not, they had to follow it.

Even if it meant their lives.

*             *             *

It was dark when they arrived at the address. Dark and late. That in itself should have been an omen warning them against going ahead with this plan.  Young and foolish as they were, they ignored their instincts entirely.

It looked like any other building on the block, though Morgan could not help but see it as a place of pure evil. The people that ran the place were condoning – encouraging – all the horrors he had gone through as an adolescent, and he wanted to do nothing more than to shove them up against a wall and tell them exactly what he thought of them. The more he thought about it, the more he realized that Emily was probably the only thing stopping him from doing so.

Taking a deep breath, she knocked on the door. After less than a minute, it opened a crack. ‘What do you want?’ a muffled voice asked.

‘We heard this was the place to go if we wanted some action.’ Her voice almost cracked, but he managed to hold it together. She wasn’t a liar by nature; she could lie, yes. Politics had taught her how to do that. But that didn’t mean she didn’t hate herself every time she had to do it.

‘Where did you hear that?’ the muffled voice wanted to know.

‘Does it really matter?’ she asked brusquely. ‘We’ve got the cash.’ She held up a thick wad of notes, which was apparently enough to, at the very least, get them an entrance. Money got you anything these days.

The doorman was young – barely as old as Morgan – and probably only there to make a few extra bucks.

‘What’s your fare?’ he asked, trying to maintain a façade of nonchalance, though both Morgan and Emily could tell that the entire situation made the kid extremely uncomfortable.

Morgan was silent. His mind kept flashing back to those weekends up in the cabin with Carl Buford. Subtly, Emily pushed herself forward.

‘He doesn’t really like talking about these things,’ she explained, apologetic. She’d gone for one of the raunchier outfits in her wardrobes, and even that was relatively tame. Still, though, she wanted to put on a voyeuristic air. ‘He’s looking to experiment. Bi-curious and all. What do you want to do this week, sweetie?’

Morgan shrugged, playing the role of the submissive partner. If the situation weren’t so entirely unfunny, he would have found her behavior amusing.

‘Tell you what,’ she said, ‘I think he’s feeling a little bit kinky this week, so someone who doesn’t mind being bound and gagged.’

The doorman gave her what almost amounted to a glare – as if she disgusted him. She didn’t blame the kid. As soon as this was over, the first thing she wanted to do was go home and take a long hot shower.

‘Second floor,’ he said finally. ‘They’ll deal with you there.’

Emily raised an eyebrow; it was a strange set-up. Unlike the places she’d seen in her – admittedly short – tenure as an FBI agent.

‘Does this feel weird to you?’ she asked Morgan as they ascended the staircase.

‘A little bit,’ he admitted.

The second floor felt empty – the result they had been dreading. On the one hand, it meant this was a trap. On the other hand, it meant that they could defend themselves without endangering innocent lives.

Morgan unholstered the pistol that was concealed beneath his jacket.

It was game on.


	13. Chapter 13

There were two of them, both armed.

Not looking back, Morgan edged a little to the side, as if to protect Emily. She frowned.

If it were any other time, any other place, she would have called him out on it. She’d been doing this for longer than he had, and she damn well knew how to look after herself. The only reason he got the gun was because what she was wearing barely covered the essentials, let alone a fully loaded Glock 27.

The Glock was Emily’s back-up weapon. Her service pistol was probably sitting somewhere in Agent Wellington’s office, under lock and key. She felt a burst of frustration at that fact. Had they both been armed, they might have had a chance.

‘Drop your weapon, pig,’ one of the men ordered. Emily recognized him as the guy that had given them the address in the first place. Shit.

Morgan didn’t move an inch. He kept the weapon leveled at their main assailant’s chest. If nothing else, he could take one of them down.

The first bullet whizzed past his ear, slamming into the wall behind them. His eardrums reeled from such a loud noise in a confined space. Still, though, he didn’t drop the gun. Didn’t back down. He’d never fired a bullet in the line of duty before, and yet he felt a strange confidence. A confidence that dropped away almost entirely when the man to his left started edging around the room. It wasn’t just Morgan’s life on the line anymore. Of course, it never had been, but now they were issuing this non-verbal threat to Emily’s life, he knew that he had to put the gun down.

The last thing he felt was something solid crashing against the back of his head.

*             *             *

Pain and cold.

Those were two things that Morgan was immediately aware of upon waking up.

The third thing he was aware of was a voice. A strangely distant voice that seemed to be saying, ‘You’re an idiot.’

‘What?’ He sat up, hand immediately going to his head. It came away sticky with blood.

‘I said “How’s your head?”’ Dark, concerned eyes were looking down into his.

Oh.

He gathered that it must have been his subconscious telling him that he was an idiot. After all, it had been his bravado that had almost gotten both of them killed. Instead, they were locked in a…it wasn’t a cell by any traditional sense of the word. There were no barred windows. There were no windows at all. It was simply a tiny room with a locked door. He heard a strange buzzing, that was either the sound of an air-conditioner, or his mind playing tricks on him.

Cold.

He looked down, realizing that he was clad only in his boxer shorts. At his side, Emily too had been stripped of her clothing, leaving only a black strapless bra and matching panties. Her normally smooth skin was covered with goosebumps, and her nipples were erect. He was almost glad she’d talking him out of wanting her to wear the thong. Her eyes matched his gaze.

‘I’d say it’s partly for humiliation, partly for kicks,’ she said darkly. ‘Here, let me look at your head.’

He sat up, groaning at the shockwaves of pain that went through his body. He tilted his head forward slightly so that she could examine the wound.

‘It doesn’t look too bad,’ she announced eventually. ‘The bleeding’s stopped. Probably a minor concussion at worst. I think it made you more susceptible to the sedation.’

He vaguely recalled being hit over the back of the head, and then a short period of blurriness. They had drugged him then. That was probably good news for his brain. However, it also meant that Emily had been drugged as well, and _that_ meant that she had no idea where they were. It was a supposition that she soon confirmed.

‘I woke up maybe twenty minutes ago,’ she said, scrunching her nose. There was a bruise on her cheek that suggested that she hadn’t exactly willingly subjected to the drugging.

‘I’m fine.’ She brushed off his concern. ‘What I’m really worried about, is why they wanted to keep us alive.’

That made Morgan stop in his tracks. There was no real reason for their captors to keep them alive, was there? Their bodies should have been dumped by now, leaving no-one the wiser. He didn’t answer.

‘You need to get some rest,’ she said finally, noticing the glazed look in his eyes. ‘You don’t want to exacerbate the head injury.’

‘Here?’ he asked doubtfully, looking around. The cell was unfurnished – as far as he could tell, it was simply a floor, a ceiling, four walls and a door.

Sighing, Emily pulled him towards her, letting his head rest on her chest.

‘Oh,’ was all he said.

‘No funny business,’ she warned him, with a tone of mock brusqueness. ‘Or I might let you slip into a coma.’

He wanted to argue, he really did. But his head was still fuzzy, and he couldn’t deny that sleep was probably the best thing. And no matter what Emily said, it felt nice having another body pressed up so close to him in this bitter cold.


	14. Chapter 14

Special Agent in Charge Maxwell Wellington of the Violent Crimes task force stared at his clock. It was 10.47a.m. For the last seven and a half months, Emily Prentiss had consistently arrived before 8 a.m. It was a dedication that he failed to see from some of the more seasoned agents.

And yet, it was 10.47a.m. on the day she was due back, and her desk remained untouched. It was highly uncharacteristic. No matter how hard he was on her, she wouldn’t show up late just to spite him.

Then, he remembered the address she had left him, the last words she had spoken before storming out of the office. _“Maybe next time I’ll just stay around make sure that my desk is sufficiently polished instead of trying to catch a killer.”_

_Shit._

She’d gone and checked it out herself. And now she wasn’t showing up for work.

This was bad.

_Who had she been with? _Pearson’s partner. They would have checked out the address together, of that Wellington had no doubt. Prentiss was many things, but stupid wasn’t one of them.

Sighing, he picked up the phone, and dialed the phone number of Lieutenant Daniel Heller. He had the feeling that this was going to be a long day.

*             *             *

Supervisory Special Agent Aaron Hotchner was on the phone to his fiancée, Haley, when walked up to his desk. Thirty-three years old, Hotch, as he had been affectionately labeled by his colleagues, had been in the Behavioral Analysis Unit for a little more than three years, firstly under the command of the legendary David Rossi, and more recently that of Gideon.

‘Got a case,’ Gideon mouthed. Hotch nodded, finishing up his conversation. As soon as he had returned the handset to its cradle, Gideon handed him the file.

‘It’s an interesting one,’ the older profiler commented. ‘Chicago – A young homeless man disappears, and then a police officer and an FBI agent investigate, and then they disappear too. No bodies recovered. No other evidence.’

Hotch flipped through the file, staring at the photos of the missing persons. He paused.

‘You know one of them?’ Gideon asked, reading the expression on Hotch’s face.

‘I know the FBI agent,’ answered Hotch. ‘I worked for her mother, about seven years ago. Ambassador Elizabeth Prentiss.’

Gideon nodded. ‘Did you want to take point on this one?’

Hotch frowned. He’d never taken a solo case before.

‘I think you’re ready,’ shrugged Gideon. ‘Besides, I have consults to do.’

Hotch picked up the phone again. It looked like he wouldn’t be going home any time soon.

*             *             *

They’d talked a lot.

That’s all there really was to do; sleep, and talk.

It had been over thirty-six hours since they had awoken in the small cell, and it almost felt as though they knew a good deal of what there was to know about each other. Favorite food, favorite movie, favorite color. That was just the tip of the ice-berg. After all, what better place was there to bare your soul? What better place to confess your sins?

Morgan had told her his greatest demon; it was only fair that she should reciprocate.

That didn’t make it any easier.

‘…I was fifteen years old, in a foreign country. I couldn’t tell my parents, and let’s face it; an abortion is pretty hard to get in the Roman Catholic capital of the world.’ There were tears running down her cheeks, and yet she could not remember having started to cry. Hell, she couldn’t even remember the last time she _had _cried. Crying wasn’t something that was done without very good reason in the Prentiss household. ‘I had a friend…Matthew – he helped me find a doctor. He sacrificed everything to help me; I ruined his life with my stupid mistake, and now, I can’t help but think…what if it was a mistake? What if that was my only chance to have kids? Have I screwed that up too?’

Morgan pulled her closer towards him, arms tightening around her waist. The air-conditioner had been long since, yet they remained close – as much to have psychological comfort as well as physical comfort.

‘God, I’m sorry,’ she muttered. ‘I know it’s nothing –_ nothing­_ – compared to what you went through, but…I’ve never told anyone before today.’

‘It’s okay,’ he whispered, kissing the top of her hair. ‘There’s still plenty of time left. We’re going to make it out of here alive.’

If she was going to die, Emily reasoned, the company was pretty good.

And with that thought, they heard the sound of the door unlocking. Things were about to get interesting.


	15. Chapter 15

Derek Morgan felt the booted foot slam into his ribs. Less than a minute had passed since the door swung open, and already he had forgotten how to breathe.

‘Who knows you were investigating?’ the man bellowed, only Derek soon realized that the question wasn’t being addressed to him. He turned slowly, painfully. The first thing he saw was the gun in his face. It was dark – much more ominous than something so small should be. His eyes flickered towards Emily, standing less than two feet from his assailant. Her eyes were on the gun.

Derek wheezed as he felt the boot collide with his chest yet again; he was sure he’d cracked a rib or two, at the very least. It wasn’t that he couldn’t overpower the guy – the gun was just a variable that he didn’t want to mess with. Not with Emily standing so close.

‘WHO KNOWS?’

He pulled away from Morgan completely, shoving the gun into Emily’s neck. ‘Who knows?’ he whispered. She could feel his hot breath against her face, his body pressed up against her bare skin. Involuntarily, she shivered.

‘The FBI,’ she whispered softly. ‘Chicago P.D.’ Evidently, they were not the answers he had been searching for. His hand moved quickly, and before she even had time to register what was happening, she had been pistol-whipped.

‘Emily!’

Though it hurt even to move, Morgan managed to pull himself up. He wasn’t about to give up without a fight. Wasn’t about to let this bastard hurt her any more than he already had. The terrifying thing was, he didn’t even recognize this guy. They’d seen two confirmed members of this whole convoluted conspiracy the day before, and now a third? How many of them were there?

And what the hell was going on?

These questions, Morgan was too busy to try and answer. At that moment, he was fighting for his life; a feat that would have been easier accomplished had his torso not felt like it was on fire.

Warm blood splattered, as he heard the crunch of his own nose. He felt that booted foot once more as it kicked him backwards into the wall, only this time, it stayed there. His assailant pressed his foot in a little further, exacerbating the already agonizing pain in Morgan’s ribs.

‘You just had to be the hero,’ the man said, smirking. ‘This isn’t an action movie, kid. Things don’t always go like you plan them. You don’t automatically win because you’re the “good guy.”’ He waved the gun around, as if to make a point – “You’re lucky I don’t shoot your ass.”

‘You know what this place is?’ the man asked, strangely calm all of a sudden. Morgan didn’t like it at all. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Emily pulling herself from the ground, hand against her head.

_This place. _What did he mean by that? All Morgan had seen so far was the one room. He couldn’t make a judgment based on that.

‘Sex trafficking ring?’ he tried. It hurt to talk, and his words slurred. _Sex trafficking_. That’s the story they had been baited with. Whether or not there was any truth to it was another matter altogether.

‘Right.’

His heart sunk. Random acts of violence he probably could have handled. But this. This seemed so much worse for some reason. Partially because he knew that it meant there were others out there; the kinds of people this “business” catered to. People that would quite happily hand off a suitcase of cash for a sex toy, no matter how illegal. People who got off on snuff porn, who kept the industry moving. And they were stuck right in the middle of it.

And then, he gave Morgan a smirk, and glanced in Emily’s direction.

_Oh God. Oh please, God no._

He tried to stand, only to be pushed back down again, pain radiating through-out his torso. He had never felt pain like this before. It was more than the physical pain, it was the pain of knowing that he could very well have just ruined Emily’s life.

For good measure, the man struck him across the head again – enough to stop him from getting up, but not enough that he would pass out. He needed to watch.

No sooner than she had gotten up, Emily found herself being pushed back to the ground. His hands and body were pressed up against her, any restraint he might once have shown completely gone.

‘No-one can fault me for sampling the merchandise,’ he said, through gritted teeth. Already, she could feel his arousal, the length of him pressed up against her thigh. She felt like vomiting. Was this the real reason they had taken her clothes? Easier access?

Both her body and her mind attempted to fight back, debilitated though they were. In another time, another place, she knew she could have taken him in a fight and won. But now, she was tired, cold, and lacking in cognitive function. He overpowered her without a significant struggle. Of course, the fact that he was all but lying on top of her did nothing to help her plight.

His hand snaked up her bare stomach, brushing across the fabric of her bra. Repulsed by his touch, she once again tried to pull free, but failed.

‘You look…very lovely,’ he said, smiling. It was like looking at a snake. She closed her eyes, tried to pretend that it wasn’t happening. If she could just lock it all away, it would be as though it never happened.

Right?

He lowered his lips to her chest, kissing her soft skin. His hands found the bra clip at her back, unsnapped it, and pulled the garment free. She balked slightly, as his hands relocated. She tried to focus on something else. Something other than the hands that felt as though they hadn’t been washed in over a decade.

She focused on the angry noises that Morgan made as he tried to pull himself up. As he tried to find the strength to drag himself over there and help her.

Before either of the men could do anything, though, the proceedings were interrupted by a gun shot.


	16. Chapter 16

Emily groaned, pushing the dead weight off of her. Her groan quickly turned to a gasp when she realized that she was covered in blood. Not her blood. It was the blood of the man that had just attacked her. He lay there, dead, an entry wound his back. The bullet had buried itself into the ground, just inches from her stomach.

Dead. Morgan couldn’t have shot him; even if he wasn’t injured, he didn’t have a weapon to speak of. Slowly, she lifted her eyes upward. On the one hand, she was grateful that the man had been killed before he’d been able to do what he was planning to do. On the other hand, she wasn’t entirely sure that they weren’t about to experience an even worse fate.

She blinked, as the world seemed to come to a stop. There was a man standing over her, with a Glock in his hand – the same man that had given them the address that led them straight into an ambush. She was lying there, half naked, and covered in blood. She couldn’t move, could barely breathe.  She wasn’t entirely sure that she was going to survive the next thirty seconds, and the only thing her mind was thinking about was the fact that Morgan was in need of medical attention.

When he holstered the pistol, she let out a breath. Not looking him in the eye, she scrambled for her discarded bra, still wary of the fact that things were far from good. They were still trapped in the cell, and definitely worse for wear.

‘Morgan, can you hear me?’ She was at his side in seconds, delicately trying to assess the severity of his injuries. Her own head was swimming still, no doubt a consequence of the pistol that had struck her skull only minutes before.

‘’m fine,’ he murmured, with a tone of voice that told Emily he was most definitely _not_ fine. He was bleeding in half a dozen different places, and she knew for a fact that he had been kicked in the ribs at least twice.

‘What the hell is this, Rick?’ came a voice from the door. Emily glanced to the door quickly, noting that there were now two men standing there, both staring down at the body of their accomplice. One was “Rick,” the person that had pulled them into this mess. The other, she didn’t recognize.

‘Oh come on, Mike, you can’t deny that the guy was an ass. He almost killed the black guy, was getting handsy with the bitch. Having him around sure as hell wasn’t doing us any favors.’

Emily bit her lip. It really wasn’t the time to rail on their captor for political incorrectness.

‘Whatever,’ Mike shrugged. ‘I don’t care. Just don’t kill them. Tom says he wants them moved.’

‘What, now?’ was Rick’s exasperated reply. ‘He doesn’t want to break them down a little more?’

‘I’m just following his orders, Rick. Talk with him about it if you’ve got a problem.’

Rick shook his head, before turning his attention back to Emily and Morgan. Emily did not like the look of malice in his eye.

‘Time to get up,’ he said, hand resting against his holstered weapon.

Emily really didn’t like where this was going.

*             *             *

Hotch leaned his head back into the seat. He hated flying sometimes. He had heard rumors that the Bureau were going to dip into the budget to provide a jet for the BAU, but so far, that had all led to naught. Instead, he was squashed up in seat 17B, next to a drunken middle-aged woman, and an older gentleman who snored like a freight train.

He had the pertinent files resting in front of him, re-reading them for what felt like the hundredth time. This was his first solo case – his chance at making a name for himself in the Behavioral Analysis Unit. He didn’t want to screw it up.

That said, it was definitely a strange amalgamation of circumstances. Dead cop, missing teenager, missing cop, missing federal agent. The testimony of both SAIC Max Wellington and Lieutenant Daniel Heller revealed the same thing; Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss had definitely been looking into Steven Simmons’s disappearance on their own time. Neither the Bureau nor the CPD had seen anything suspicious in the circumstances of the disappearance, a statement both agencies were quickly amending. After all, law enforcement officers didn’t often disappear for no reason.

On first glance, it seemed to make some kind of sense; in the course of their investigation, they had discovered the address Prentiss had left unceremoniously in Wellington’s office, and, in the absence of back-up from either of their respective employers, they had investigated the place themselves. Hotch wasn’t quite sure if that was bravery, stupidity, or some mixture of the two. That said, he admired their dedication. Most LEOs Hotch had worked with would have given up long ago.

Whatever the outcome, Aaron Hotchner was positive that this was going to be a case he would definitely remember for some time.


	17. Chapter 17

Emily woke up with a fuzzy head for the third time in the last week. It was becoming a thing. The difference this time, though, was that she woke up alone, and fully clothed.

The last thing she remembered was being stabbed with the needle again, sedative coursing through her veins, and having a vague awareness of Morgan being subjected to the same fate.

He wasn’t in the room with her – they must have moved him to another place entirely. For some reason, not knowing where he was terrified her. As though they had taken him away to suffer the same fate as all the other men that had been kidnapped by these jerks. She needed to know where he was. Needed to know that he was safe. At the same time, she was painstakingly attentive to the fact that she probably wasn’t going to find out either of those things.

The only thing that had really improved about the situation was that the living conditions were a little better. Someone had clothed her in a loose t-shirt and sweatpants – she didn’t want to think about what _else _they had done while she was unconscious – and she now had a mattress, blanket, pillow, and bucket. There was a tray of food sitting by the door, but she felt too nauseous to eat, in spite of the fact that had been at least forty-eight hours since she had last done so.

This new situation revealed one glaring piece of information. They were keeping her alive. No point feeding her, or keeping her clothed, or any of that if they were going to kill her. She wasn’t quite sure if she was more or less frightened at that prospect. Suffice to say that they weren’t going to keep her around for her conversational skills.

She sat up slowly, painfully aware of every bruise that had been inflicted over the last few days – both before and after their capture. Maybe next time she’d tell Morgan to go a little slower. If there ever was a next time. That possibility was becoming less and less likely with every passing moment.

With a pounding headache, it was difficult to examine the room as thoroughly as she would have liked. The door was locked, and there were no other entrances or exits. Sighing, she grabbed the water bottle that sat with the food tray. As cautious as she wanted to be, her mouth was dry, and she was thirsty as hell. She figured she’d risk the slim chance of the water being drugged. In any case, she’d just _been_ unconscious. They wouldn’t have needed to drug her.

‘Shit,’ she muttered to herself.

_‘What the hell are you going to do now?’_

*             *             *

Morgan woke up in a similar situation. His body was aching all over, blood clotting on the numbers cuts that covered his torso. He couldn’t think straight, and it hurt like hell to move. All that said, he knew for a fact that it wasn’t over yet. If this was the first stage, then what would be the second? He third? Was he going to make it out of this one alive, at all, or would his captors take pleasure in wringing him dry, of using him for their own twisted desires. He knew what that involved. He had experienced it before, and there was no way in hell he wanted to experience it again.

He’d die before he let them touch him in that way. Die before he let them hurt Emily anymore than they already had.

At that point, he realized that execution of the latter point would be difficult on his part. Emily wasn’t with him. He was alone in this cell. Left to his fate. Waking nightmares ran through his head; were they torturing her? Raping her? Just thinking about it made him nauseous enough to empty his stomach contents into the bucket in the corner of the room.

How had they screwed this one up so badly? It was meant to be simple. Take down the bad guys, revel in the fact that justice had prevailed once again. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. By that point in his incarceration, he figured that there was probably a reason why law enforcement officers were supposed to do things by the book. So that stuff like this didn’t happen.

If they died, how would any of it matter? They wouldn’t have solved the case, and they’d still be dead. The best they could hope for was someone else caring enough to look into it.

He hoped like hell that there was someone looking into it, because otherwise, he wasn’t quite sure how they were supposed to get out alive.

*             *             *

Hotch looked across at Agent Wellington. Lieutenant Heller of the Chicago Police Department stood at the corner of the room, his fingers a fidgeting blur. The cop, Hotch could tell, was anxious, while the FBI agent seemed, if anything, unrepentant. He had just finished relaying the story, giving Hotch the details that were not included in the file.

In his thirteen years of experience, both as a prosecutor, and as an FBI agent, Hotch had discovered that there were a lot of injustices in the world, not all of which could be righted. Every day, killers would walk free, victims would go unavenged. It was a flawed system that no-one was doing anything to fix. He wasn’t even sure that it _could_ be fixed. Evidently, Officer Morgan and Agent Prentiss had been doing their damndest to try, and it had gotten them kidnapped. Or worse.

He wouldn’t be surprised to find their bodies within the next week or so.

‘Have you spoken to their families? Their neighbors? Anyone who might know something?’

‘I spoke to Agent Morgan’s mother,’ answered Heller. ‘The last time she saw him was the night of Pearson’s murder. She says that he apparently mentioned the disappearance of the homeless boy – Stevie – but didn’t share anything else.’

Hotch nodded. Not much had happened by that point – there was very little that Morgan _could_ have told his family. ‘And Agent Prentiss?’ he asked, with the sinking feeling that he already knew what the answer was.

‘Lives alone, no siblings, Parents are overseas right now. We’ve tried to contact them, but it’s difficult to get through sometimes. We still haven’t talked to their neighbors though.’

‘I can deal with that,’ Hotch decided, his brow knitting into what could have been described as a frown. He wasn’t exactly pleased at the way the investigation was being run. Bad decisions had been made. Bad decisions that lead to the death of one law enforcement officer, and the disappearance of two others.

And Hotch was going try his hardest to make sure that it didn’t get to _three_ dead officers.


	18. Chapter 18

Hotch used the key given to him by Agent Prentiss’ landlord to let himself into the apartment. It emanated a sense of emptiness, as if it were somehow aware that its owner was currently missing. He had vague memories of the Ambassador’s daughter from his stint at security five years ago, but in those memories Agent Prentiss was mostly fishnet stockings and dark eye shadow. Things had obviously changed a lot since then.

Based on the décor of the place, FBI agent wouldn’t have been his first guess of the owner’s occupation.  Of the agents Hotch had worked with, most of them had homes that left a lot to be desired; of course, that was generally BAU agents, and they were all middle-aged white men.

For the most part, the apartment was rather well maintained; the carpet was vacuumed, the kitchen was clean. However, some things looked just a little bit out of place. The couch was slightly skewed, and there was paper scattered around the kitchen table.

Had there been a struggle of some variety? Nothing was broken. He looked around a little more, and the pieces started to fit together when he noticed the discarded clothes strewn around the living room, and the used condoms in the trashcan.

He gave the rest of the apartment a cursory check over, and, finding nothing of interest (save for the expected contents of the upstairs trashcans), returned to the notes that were scattered on the coffee table, and around the kitchen table.

The notes corroborated the story given to him by Special Agent Wellington; Morgan and Prentiss had found an address, and, in lieu of any other options, had chosen to go in. Hotch understood their reasons for doing so – even  if Wellington refused to believe it, there was definitely something suspicious going on – but to go in without backup was a newbie mistake, and if they were found alive, he’d reprimand them for their idiocy. Still, he admired their dedication. It was something that he found severely lacking in most law enforcement officers. For them, integrity was a little more than a word between integration and integument.

If things were as bad as they looked, though, he was fairly sure that these two were lost already.

*          *          *

He was lying on his mattress, staring at the ceiling, when the door clicked open. He’d lost track of time in the small cell, and it was slowly sending him insane. He’d heard stories about sensory deprivation as a torture method, but never really considered the possibility that he would ever experience it himself.

He recognized the faces of his two captors; he remembered some names, but they were so blurred together in his mind that he knew any attempt to link the two would just result in a headache. The third person he most definitely did recognize.

He was thrown to the ground just feet from Morgan, and there was a moment of silence before the sound of the door slamming shook the room.

Stevie.

The young homeless man who Derek Morgan saw almost every day he was out on the street. The reason he had gone on this crusade in the first place. Did Stevie still have a chance of getting out alive? Had it all been for nothing?

‘Hey, Stevie.’ He edged towards the boy, reaching out slowly. Stevie, to his dismay, recoiled in fear. He was breathing heavily, and his body was covered in bruises.

For a split second, Morgan remembered his childhood. Remembered the first time Carl Buford had taken him to the cabin, the first time he had…

He knew this behavior. Knew what they had done to Stevie. Knew that no matter what happened, he was going to be just that little bit broken for the rest of his life. Just like Morgan.

‘Stevie…It’s Derek.’ He spoke softly, in what he hoped was a reassuring tone. No-one had been there for him – no-one to give him comfort. He had his mother and sisters, but they didn’t – they _couldn’t_ know. The only other person was Carl. ‘You remember me, right?’He wasn’t sure if the young man knew his first name, but he was reluctant to use his title. It was too impersonal, and it implied some level of control that offset any security it might have provided.

Stevie nodded, and Morgan almost breathed a sigh of relief. ‘We’re going to get out of this, you hear me?’

The words echoed into silence.


	19. Chapter 19

The building did not look particularly ominous; it looked just the same as any other building on the block, most of which were apartments. At best, this building was a brothel, at worst, a gravesite. He’d pulled the file for the building, a file which listed it as empty. From the street, it was hard to tell – the windows were boarded up, and there were no lights on. It was late afternoon, though, closing in on forty-eight hours since Prentiss and Morgan’s disappearance.

If everything Hotch’s gut was telling him was accurate, then it was this building that they’d been taken from. The circumstances had been enough to allow for a raid, which was why Aaron Hotchner found himself at the rear end of a S.W.A.T team. He felt the adrenaline rushing as the door was taken care of with a battering ram. He followed the S.W.A.T team in, only to feel the adrenaline screeching to a halt as it became evident that the building was empty.

He re-holstered his weapon, and stepped back out into the early evening air. Chicago P.D. officers were clearing the rest of the building, but Hotch was fairly certain that they wouldn’t find anyone; kidnapped law enforcement officers or otherwise. This had been an ambush.

All hope was not lost, though. He could still canvass the neighborhood to determine if anyone had seen something. If he could confirm that the two had in fact, been in the building, then it might be enough to get a forensics team in.

He pulled the two personnel photos from his pocket, and made his way to the building opposite. This was going to take a while.

*          *          *

Emily felt the pain shoot through her body as she was pulled to her feet. She wasn’t extensively wounded, by any sense of the word – there was a fair bit of bruising, and a mild concussion, but nothing life-threatening. Of course, any injury left without treatment was wont to become a complete pain in the ass.

She recognized the man who kept a tight grip on her arm. It took a few seconds of the cognitive gears turning before she managed to place the recognition – maybe the head wound was a little worse than she thought. She’d only seen him once – after the other man (Rick?) had shot their accomplice. What was his name, again? Matthew? Michael? Mike. That’s right. He seemed a little less evil than any other bad guy she’d seen so far, but then, he had to be at a certain level of evil to be hanging around them.

Still, it gave her enough some confidence that he might be receptive to questioning. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked, painstakingly aware of the fact that her voice was fading.

‘We don’t usually do chicks,’ he said, matter-of-factly. ‘We had to outsource.’ The pain was quickly overshadowed by horror. _Outsourced? They were getting rid of her?_

Shit.

She really, really didn’t want that to happen. If they moved her, then she’d _definitely_ be away from Morgan, and that meant any chance of escape was a pipe dream. Any chance of escaping together, that is.

With as much attention as she could muster, she checked out her surroundings. It wasn’t a residential building. Industrial, by the looks of it – maybe the office area of a warehouse. Definitely not where she wanted to be.

Mike pushed open a door at the end of the hallway, pulling her inside after him. Feeling a foot at the back of her knees, she dropped to the ground heavily, wincing at the impact.

There were two other men in the room, both of who had their eyes on her. She felt sick to her stomach.

One of the men stepped forward, head tilted to the side. He was judging her. Like livestock. His hand shot out, grasping at her chin. He tilted her head, examining the bruises that mottled her skin. She tried to jerk out of his grasp, but there was no doubt about the fact that he had the upper hand.

‘Young,’ he said, eventually, ‘Pretty. Damaged goods?’

‘Fuck off,’ she spat at him, which earned her a backhand to the face.

‘Feisty,’ he chuckled. ‘That’s always popular. I have a very dominating clientele.’

‘She’s a Fed,’ the second man said, emphasizing “Fed” as though it was a dirty word, and to them it probably was.

‘Are you fucking serious? What am I supposed to do with a Fed?’

The second man grinned. ‘Like you said – you have a dominating clientele. How many of them would jump at this chance?’

‘I’ll think about it,’ the first man said finally. ‘But no promises.’ There was a long pause. ‘Fuck me. A Fed?’

Emily felt the bile rise in her throat, and was vomiting before she had the chance to stop herself.


	20. Chapter 20

After what felt like hours of questioning door to door, Aaron Hotchner had found no-one that could tell him anything of importance. As with any door-to-door, there had been people who had lied through their teeth, people who thought he was there to fix the toilet, people who asked him whether or not he could do anything about the neighbors playing their music too loudly…

But no-one that could tell him anything about two law enforcement officers that had seemingly vanished without a trace.

But then…maybe searching door to door was the wrong option. The case had started on the streets, and he was more likely to get useful intel, even if the majority of people he saw would refuse to talk to a federal agent.

Twenty minutes in, he struck pay dirt, and all it had cost him was a cup of coffee. The young man clutched the cup tightly, avoiding eye contact.

‘Did something happen to Eric?’ he mumbled, and Hotch found himself frowning.

‘Who’s Eric?’

‘He was talking to them.’ The young man gestured to the photos that Hotch had just shown him. ‘He was talking to them, and now he’s gone. I think they took him.’

‘Who’s “they”?’

The man shrugged. ‘I dunno. There’s been a lot of talk about people being kidnapped for sex. Human trafficking, you know?’

Hotch swore inwardly. If Morgan and Prentiss had inadvertently uncovered a human trafficking ring, then they were as good as lost. Either dead, or sold along the line. The best he could hope for was that they hadn’t gone too far just yet.

*          *          *

In lieu of any other option, he drove back to the Chicago Field Office – his own knowledge of human trafficking was sub-par. After several painstaking attempts, he was finally directed to someone that could help him.

‘Philip Farnsworth,’ the man introduced himself. ‘You’re BAU?’

Hotch nodded. ‘Aaron Hotchner. I’m investigating the disappearance of Officer Derek Morgan and Agent Emily Prentiss.’

‘And you think they might have gotten lost in the world of human trafficking.’

Hotch went over the details of the case so far, starting with the kidnapping of Steven Simmons, and ending with the conversation he’d just had with the young man on the street.

 Well, in that case, you’ve come to the right place,’ Philip grimaced. ‘And it sounds as though someone probably should have come a little sooner.’

He passed Hotch a thick file. ‘Most people hear trafficking and they think “Russian brides” or sex slaves, but the truth is, there’s a lot more trafficking from inside the borders than you might think. It’s usually women and children, though. If these guys are kidnapping men, then it’ll make them a lot easier to narrow down. I have a few contacts I might be able to get something out of.’

Hotch thanked him, and sat down to go over the files while Philip made the calls. Step by step, he was getting closer.

*          *          *

Emily feared the worst when she was pulled to her feet, but apparently there was still more to be discussed, because she wasn’t gagged and blindfolded and taken to a secret helicopter or anything like that, but rather taken back to the cell.

No. Not the same cell that she’d been in for the last…how long had it been? It was a different cell. And it wasn’t empty. She almost cried in relief when she saw Morgan in there, looking a little worse for wear, but alive, and that was all that really mattered. The second person she didn’t recognize, but judging from both his and Morgan’s behavior, she assumed that it was Stevie. He was curled in a ball, apparently asleep.

Her attention shifted quickly back to Morgan, who stood as she entered.

‘Did they hurt you?’ Morgan asked, quickly enveloping her in a hug. It felt safe and warm, in spite of the needles of pain shooting through her body at such close contact.

She shook her head, belying the          fresh blood that was trickling from her nose. Pulling away slightly, she tried to rub it away, but succeeded only in smearing it across her face. ‘I’m fine,’ she said, almost laughing at the sheer incredulity of the statement. Fine. Freaked out, insecure, neurotic and emotional. ‘But they…’ She choked on her own words. She hadn’t really realized just how completely fucking terrified she was. They were so far out of their depth they were drowning.

_They’re going to_ sell _me._ There was no way she could tell him that without making it sound twisted. And without making him punch the wall.

‘They’re…they’re moving me,’ she settled on, and it sounded just as sick out loud as it had in her head. These people were twisted. Depraved. Just as bad as any serial killer. They didn’t seem to have any value for human life at all, beyond a dollar value.

Just as bad as politics.

‘I think it’s time to fight back,’ Morgan said, his voice soft, almost desperate.

‘They’re pretty heavily armed,’ Emily said, not an argument, but not an acceptance yet either. ‘We’d have to get out quickly.’

He nudged her. ‘“All warfare is based on deception,” right? Sun Tzu?’

She laughed, and there was no humor in it at all. ‘You remember how that turned out last time.’ She shook her head.

What other choice did they have?


	21. Chapter 21

Morgan paced the small cell, his body pumping with adrenaline. It seemed bitterly ironic – no sooner than they’d made the decision to fight back the next time the doors opened, their captors had decided not to actually open them.

It had been several hours since they’d last seen another person. He no longer had any idea what time it was, or how long they’d been there. The effects of their captivity were starting to take their toll; even with the adrenaline, he was feeling weak from blood loss and other injuries. He was sure that Emily was no different. If they didn’t act soon, they wouldn’t be able to act at all.

He wondered if there were people looking for him – he knew for a fact that his mother and sisters would not stop hounding Lieutenant Heller until they received some kind of answer. He almost felt sorry for his boss, but not too sorry. Getting out alive was his main focus.

‘What do you think?’ Emily asked him, her voice low. She was sitting in the corner of the room, her arms wrapped around her knees. She looked about as bad as he felt, cheeks sunken and hollow, dried blood matting her hair. If they did ever get out of this, a shower would be pretty high up on their list of “things to do.” And food, his stomach reminded him with a rumble; while there was a half empty bottle of water that they’d been drinking from sparingly, he couldn’t quite remember the last time he’d eaten. Whether that was a side-effect of the concussion, or if the sensory deprivation was worse than he’d realized, he wasn’t quite sure.

‘They can’t leave us here forever,’ he shrugged, testing the doorknob again. It had been locked the last hundred times he’d tried it, and nothing had changed. If it weren’t a heavy, steel monstrosity, he might have considered kicking it down. As it stood, though, doing so would probably result in a broken foot. That was the last thing he needed.

‘They probably could,’ she shrugged. ‘Lock us in, pack their stuff up. We die of starvation and anyone looking finds our bodies once they start stinking too much.’

There was a long pause.

‘Wow,’ Emily said, stunned at her own words. ‘Morbid, much? I guess I lose my inhibitions when I’m being held captive by massive jerks.’

Morgan was about to reply when he heard the sound of approaching footsteps. Evidently, his reaction was present in his body language, because Emily stood, casting a sideways glance to Stevie, who had fallen asleep in the fetal position. They’d made a silent agreement not to involve him in their plan – not because they couldn’t trust him, but because if things went south, they didn’t want him getting any more hurt than he already was.

The word “plan” was something of an overstatement, though. The strategy involved straight out attacking if there was only one of them, and causing some kind of distraction if there were two. Three or more was an anomaly that they hadn’t quite taken into consideration, and with the injuries they had between them, any plan wouldn’t have been any more complicated than “kick them and run like hell.”

He and Emily shared a look; it might have said “this is it” but “are we insane?” was an equally likely message. He stepped around so that he was behind the door hinge; the position would either give him a split second advantage, or a bullet in the head.

The door swung open, and Emily’s head inclined just the slightest touch. Just one, then. The next few moments were a blur, at the end of which there was an unconscious man at his feet, plastic tray with a few slices of bread on it knocked to the ground, and Emily had a gun in her hand. Knowing that he probably had the advantage over her in hand-to-hand combat situations, he didn’t argue.

‘We need to get moving,’ she said, and Morgan didn’t need telling twice.

 Stevie had stirred somewhat during the commotion, such that it only took a few soft words to wake him up. Morgan wanted to avoid touching the boy, where possible – he knew what it was like, to be in that state where you were unsure whether or not you could trust someone.

‘We’re going to get you out of here,’ Morgan said firmly, leaving no room for doubt, even though there was so much of it.

‘My mom…?’ he asked, and Morgan knew that he was referring to Rita, rather than his biological mother.

‘She’s fine, buddy. She’s worried sick about you. I told her I’d bring you back.’

The boy nodded, getting to his feet. ‘I think I saw an exit, when they were moving me around.’ His voice was soft, but there was a strength behind it that Morgan admired. No kid should ever have to go through so much, and yet Stevie was getting through it.

Emily took the lead, the gun out in front of her. She was breathing heavily, and Morgan knew he was too. They were so close, and yet so far away.

His heart sunk when he heard the voice. The “hey!” that was so definitive of them being in a place they weren’t supposed to be.

He saw Emily turn, finger against the trigger. Her eyes were wide, and all Morgan could do was watch as he heard the sound of two near simultaneous gunshots piercing the air.

*          *          *

Aaron Hotchner awoke with a jerk. He’d fallen asleep on somebody else’s desk, files pressed to his face. Every lead he followed was a dead end, but he wasn’t quite ready to believe that Derek Morgan and Emily Prentiss were dead – there would have been bodies, if they were.

As if on cue, Lieutenant Heller was at his side, a stony look on his face.

‘Something happened?’ Hotch asked, noting the file in the Lieutenant’s hand.

‘Civilian called in a body, patrol officers from another precinct checked it out. African-American male – early to mid-twenties. No signs of a white female.’

Hotch let out a sigh. ‘You think it’s Morgan?’

The Lieutenant shook his head, ‘The officers that took the call have never met him, so it’s too early to say. No-one’s identified the body yet. I’m going down there now, if you’d like to come.’

Hotch nodded, packing up the file that he’d fallen asleep on. He had the sinking feeling that he’d be investigating a murder, rather than just and abduction.

He wasn’t wrong.


	22. Chapter 22

‘It’s not Morgan,’ Heller told him, as he hung up the phone. Hotch felt the slightest bit of relief, but not too much. Someone was still dead, after all.

‘Guy’s name is Eric Carlson. We had a patrol officer showing his photo around the area. A few arrests for petty theft, vagrancy...’

‘Do you think it might be related?’ Hotch queried, his head cocked slightly.

‘To be perfectly frank, Agent Hotchner, there are a lot of people murdered in this city every year. A lot of it is gang related, and most of it is pretty damn senseless. I understand your job is important, but it’s not the way we tend to look at crime around here.’

‘This isn’t gang related,’ Hotch frowned, looking pointedly at the crime scene photos that had been sent over. ‘Gang related deaths are usually more public – they want people to know who’s responsible. This is more subdued, the same way Officer Pearson was killed. We should canvass that area, to see if anybody’s seen anything.’

‘Sure,’ the Lieutenant nodded. ‘Frank was a good cop. He didn’t deserve to go out like that.’

Hotch gave a grimace. ‘Nobody does.’

**...**

Emily felt a sharp, hot pain in her shoulder, the force of it pushing her backwards in slow motion. The gun fell from her fingers, but she didn’t hear it clatter to the floor. Ten feet away, the other gunman lay dead, and she was thankful for the fact that he was apparently not the greatest shot. Not a terrible shot, granted, she knew, looking down at the blood that was slowly starting to spread from the wound. Crimson flowers. It might have been beautiful if it wasn’t so painful.

Starting to feel kind of dizzy, she fell to her knees, good hand pressing to the wound.

‘Emily!’ She heard her name being called, as though from a distance, and through some kind of barrier. She blinked, realizing that Morgan was kneeling down beside her, concern in his eyes. ‘Stevie, grab the other gun,’ he commanded, gesturing towards the dead body.

‘Derek?’ she asked, her voice quavering, almost about to crack. ‘You need to get out of here,’ she told him. ‘Someone else will be coming soon. Get Stevie out of here and find help.’

‘That’s never going to happen, and you know it.’ He moved her hand out of the way, and she was vaguely aware of the blood that had smeared itself across her palm. He put pressure on the wound with one hand, and with the other, he started to tear a strip of material from his pants leg.

‘Not as good as surgery,’ he grinned, ‘But it’ll be enough to get us out of here.’ There was disbelief in his eyes, but she wasn’t going to call attention to it – he was lying to himself as much as he was lying to her, and maybe that lie would be enough to keep them both going for a little while longer.

‘Morgan, I can’t...I’m so numb,’ she sobbed, hyperaware of the fact that there were tears starting to fall from the corner of her eye. ‘Please, just go.’

‘No,’ he told her firmly, putting the finishing touches on her bandage. ‘Stevie, give me a hand getting her up,’ he said, turning his head, and she remembered the reason why they’d come here, why they’d been captured in the first place.

‘Derek, please...I’m dying.’ It felt like she was dying, at least. The blood was pumping out fast, in spite of the bandage, and didn’t think she could feel her arm anymore.

‘That’s stupid,’ he told her bluntly, slinging her good arm around his shoulder. ‘Who the hell is going to be my superhero sidekick if you die?’ She took a step forward, the dizziness being countered somewhat by her grip on Morgan.

‘Why do I have to be the sidekick? The sidekick always gets kidnapped,’ she said through her teeth, taking another step. Conversation was good – it gave her a grip on reality. It kept her going.

‘Crime fighting duo then,’ he amended. ‘Mulder and Scully, Xena and Gabrielle, remember? We can’t fight crime if you insist on dying – where will that leave me?’

‘In mourning,’ she muttered, but they kept moving nonetheless. They needed a phone. A phone and an exit. A phone, an exit and a shitload of luck.

‘There are other people here,’ Stevie said. ‘People that haven’t been moved yet. We should...we should try to help them.’

Emily could feel Morgan’s hesitation. ‘Look at us, Stevie – we’re not winning any battles like this. The best we can do is bring help, maybe get this operation shut down for good. That’s something, right?’

‘I guess,’ the boy shrugged, but he didn’t seem particularly enthusiastic about the answer. He was looking for justice – not an uncommon response to victimization.

‘Come on,’ Morgan said, shaking his head. ‘We need to keep moving.’


	23. Chapter 23

‘Carlson was a CI,’ Heller announced, a revelation that made Hotch frown. ‘Unofficially, apparently; never gave a name, but fed them some intel on a human trafficking ring.’

‘That’s consistent with what I’ve heard,’ Hotch said. ‘Rumors on the street of people being sold for sex. I’m waiting for a callback from someone who can tell me more.’ He gave a frown. ‘If he’s feeding intel, then that means he’s been in contact with them. Is there a way that we can check pay phone records?’

‘He could have a cell,’ Heller pointed out.

‘Possibly,’ Hotch conceded, but he wasn’t entirely convinced.

‘I’ll put word through to our computer people, but it might take a while; you can’t just pull this stuff from anywhere.’

Hotch nodded. He tried to be as hands on as possible, but there was only so much he could do without technical intervention. Even then, the cases he usually worked were a lot more straight forward; the pathology of single unsubs. Psychotics, or narcissists, or sociopaths. The group psychology of a human trafficking ring was a whole different ball-game.




‘It’s possible,’ he settled on. ‘We haven’t found a body yet, which could mean that they’re waiting until the attention has died down a little. They don’t want to be noticed – their game relies on people _not_ noticing them.’

It was another twenty minutes before they get an update on the phone records. Heller had no doubt put a priority call on them, because the paper was crumpled, and the ink barely seemed dry.

Hotch pointed to the list for one of the pay phones. ‘Here – not far from where Eric frequented, the same number was called half a dozen times in one day. “Ferber’s Consulting.” Consultancy can be a pretty vague business.’

‘You think it’s a front?’

‘I think we need to take a look at their financial records – just how good _are_ your computer people?’

‘Pretty good,’ Lieutenant Heller said with some confidence. ‘Why, the Bureau doesn’t get computer guys with their budget?’

‘Sure,’ Hotch nodded. ‘Two people for an entire department – sometimes it’s quicker to just do the legwork. I’m only asking, because if we accidentally tip them off, then Morgan and Prentiss are dead.’

Heller nodded. ‘You need them to find the records without leaving a trace. Got it – but if we get the info without a warrant, then anything we find won’t be admissible in court.’

Hotch considered the point. On the one hand, if they didn’t move soon, two people could end up dead. On the other hand, he knew well the problems that arose when the Rule of Law wasn’t followed to a T; prosecution could be tricky.

‘We need to do it anyway,’ he said finally. If there was something to find, he could pull a few strings to get a warrant for a raid, but he wanted to wait until the last possible moment before putting it into the system, just in case they did have their feelers out.

Hotch waited, while Heller put his second call through to the Department’s computer experts. The tension was slowly starting to build up; closure didn’t seem so far away.

‘They have four locations,’ Heller pointed out. ‘Which one do we hit?’

Hotch frowned. ‘It’ll be out of the way enough that nobody gets suspicious about strange activities.’

By the time they had narrowed it down to a location that fit the profile, the financial records had returned, eliciting a number of suspicious transactions. Hotch didn’t even want to think about what would happen if they had something wrong; if the company was just another company, if they went to the wrong place. Any misstep, and both Morgan and Prentiss would end up dead, and their unsubs would be lost to the wind.

He wasn’t going to let that happen.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay. Let's get this out. Apologies for 1) the fact that this took so ridiculously long, and 2) that it's not a particularly good update. I start off with ideas for case fics, and then realise that even if I have an ending planned out, I can never make it work without falling back on the same techniques, or making it sound really stupid. Right now I'm mostly focusing on getting as many stories done as possible, and I'm sorry that this one had to suffer for it. I think I got a little overambitious.
> 
> Anyway, thanks for reading, and I will makes sure that next time, I won't bite off more than I can chew.
> 
> Peace.


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